Daily Mail:
Is this the way to beat stamp duty? Savvy widower, 82, with a 10 room property 'downsizes' by splitting his home in HALF to live in one side and let the other
10 August 2017
Snippet: ... A report by the London School of Economics also claimed that stamp duty is making the housing crisis worse because it is deterring older homeowners from downsizing.
Related publications
‘Transfer Taxes and Household Mobility: Distortion on the Housing or Labor Market?’, Christian A.L. Hilber and Teemu Lyytikäinen, SERC Discussion Paper No.216, June 2017
http://www.spatialeconomics.ac.uk/textonly/SERC/publications/download/sercdp0216.pdf