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This article originally appeared in Bristows' Real Estate e-newsletter, Realty Bytes.

As has been the case in recent Budgets and Pre-Budget Reports, December's PBR contained little of major interest from a tax-perspective for those working in the property industry.

One helpful announcement was the extension for a further year of the temporary increase in the threshold at which empty properties become liable for business rates. This means that for the financial year 2010-11, properties with a rateable value of less than £18,000 will continue to be exempt from business rates, with the result that 70 per cent of empty properties will, according to Government estimates, be exempt from charge.

Two other temporary tax rate reductions have, however, come to an end. The time-limited decrease in the VAT rate to 15% has, of course, ended and the rate reverted to 17.5% on 1^st January. Equally, the SDLT holiday for residential properties up to the value of £175k also ceased at the end of last year and the SDLT threshold for residential property has returned to £125k from the beginning of this year.

As part of the 2009 Budget, HMRC issued a consultation paper on the Government proposal to introduce regulations to extend the SDLT disclosure of tax avoidance schemes (DOTAS) regime to residential property transactions worth at least £1 million and also to include a mechanism for identifying to HMRC users of any tax avoidance schemes, whether in relation to residential or commercial property, that were disclosed. Following the period of consultation, it was announced in the PBR that the Government still intends to go ahead with these extensions to the DOTAS regime and legislation will be laid before Parliament in the early part of 2010 to come into effect not later than April 2010.