Stamp Duty, Stamp Duty Reserve Tax & PTM Levy Issues

🤝 Help
1

I came across these behaviours by chance. Are they bugs?

Behaviour 1
If I create a market order for £9,000 of Barclays shares, I am charged £44.78 of “STAMP DUTY RESERVE TAX”.

However, if I create a market order for £10,000 of Barclays shares, I am charged £49.75 of “STAMP DUTY”, not “STAMP DUTY RESERVE TAX”. Why does the text change?

Behaviour 2
If I create a market order for 40,048 shares in Barclays, I am charged a £1 “PTM LEVY” and £236.36 of “STAMP DUTY”.

However, if I create a market order for 40,048.96 shares in Barclays, I am charged a £1 “PTM LEVY”, £236.40 of “STAMP DUTY” and £0.01 of “STAMP DUTY RESERVE TAX”. If I increase to 40,049 shares, the mysterious “STAMP DUTY RESERVE TAX” disappears.

PTM Levy
If I create a market order for £10,050.01 of Barclays shares, I am charged £10,000.01 for the shares and £50 for “STAMP DUTY”. Shouldn’t there be a PTM Levy of £1 since the cost of the shares is in excess of £10,000? I have to go to to £10,051.01 before the PTM Levy is charged.

Even if the “greater than £10,000” threshold only applies to whole pounds, then shouldn’t it kick in at £10,051?

2

The PTM Levy math is as follows:

£10,051.01=
£10,000.01 on shares
£50 on Stamp Duty
£1 on PTM Levy.

at £10,000 on shares you are no longer in excess of £10k and the PTM Levy doesn’t apply which results in

£10,050=
£10,000 on shares
£50 on Stamp Duty

This results in a £1.01 window between which applying the PTM Levy would reduce how much you are spending on shares equal to or below £10,000 where it would no longer be chargeable.

The hard-fix solution would be to reject orders placed for any amount in between £10050 and £10051.01 or to charge the levy separately out of the remaining free funds denying the order completely if the post-order free funds lack the necessary £1.

The only thing I know about the difference between the SD and SDRT is whether a security can be settled via CREST. This may be a specific monetary amount for Barclays and results in the difference in separate fee’s causing an odd calculation.

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3

Wow! What a great answer! I didn’t think of that. Very interesting! It’s impressive that the developers considered this case.

However, I still think that Behaviour 2 might be a bug. Did you notice that you get the same behaviour at 40,048 and 40,049 shares, but not in between those at, for example, 40,048.96? The strange behaviour happens for some amounts between the two numbers, but not others.

4

I can’t say anything about that xD being able to face such an issue would be a nicer problem to have and I would likely not care about the oddity in the taxes :stuck_out_tongue:

In the grand scheme of things those pennies disappear in the wind LOL

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5

Unfortunately, I don’t have the “nicer problem” either. I was just playing about in practice mode!

However, Behaviour 2 seemed so bizarre to me that I thought @Team212 should probably check it out, in case it is symptomatic of a more sinister bug.