Solictor 'forgot' to charge us stamp duty on mortgage?

2Packs position is not logical. (BTW I am also a practising solicitor).

It is absolutely normal to quote a fee and to include an estimate of the outlay - but the exact outlay to be ultimately charged is the exact outlay actually made (exact for that pesky "miscellaneous outlays" figure - which is outside the scope of this post).

Outlays can change. For example, stamp duty rates and land registry fees change from time to time. Once upon a time, stamp duty was payable on a mortgage once it went over £20k. If I had "quoted" outlay of £200 on a mortgage at the relavant time, if the client had accepted my quote, and if the mortgage was then made exempt before stamping, could I properly bill this money to the client and keep it for myself? Clearly not. As I didn't have to spend it, it would be wrong to collect it under the guise of "outlay". If I don't spend an outlay, I should send it back to client. If I spend an outlay, I should recover it from client. This is so basic to the standard terms of trade for lawyers the world over that it is quite possibly an implied term of the contract with your lawyer, even if not mentioned in writing.

Incidentally, the "kitchen installer" analogy is equally lacking in logic. If the kitchen installer's quoted fee was based on labour only, there might be some valid way to compare the two. But when the kitchen guy buys his components, he adds a margin to the price at which he supplies you, then adds something for labour and comes up with an "all-in" price. When a laywer pays land registry fees, search fees or stamp duty for you, he doesn't add a markup of 20%. He simply pays these sums on your behalf and gets the money back from you. The Land Registry service is not something the solicitor "sells" to you. All he sells is his time.
 
Isn't it the formal letter estimate/quotation letter from a solicitor outlining the (actual or expected?) charges applying to the work in hand? Not sure if it's specific to conveyancing or more general than that. Or how firm the figures contained therein necessarily are.
 
Re: Solictor 'forgot' to charge us?


I did ask for a receipt when we got the keys but alas it is yet to arrive. Can I say I'm not paying it until they send it out? Also, I do not have original quote in writing (it was emailed from a partner of his which has now left and he took on her clients) although I know he does as he said he charged us to it exactly when he gave us the cheque back.
 
Re: Solictor 'forgot' to charge us?


I'm afraid that he'll just make a point of not putting stamp duty on it though, as he'll know this is what I'm looking for. Glad to hear yours was in the original quote though, I could still have a chance.
 
But 'missing' the stamp duty on a Mortgage (€1 per 1000 borrowed) is inexcusable surely !!!!!!!! Hiding it from the customer to get the business on price equally so.
But these have not changes in the past year. I take your point that Brian Cowan _Could_ have changed something in the budget but did not ..did he.
This is so basic to the standard terms of trade for lawyers the world over that it is quite possibly an implied term of the contract with your lawyer, even if not mentioned in writing.
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But the OP is not a lawyer. Lawyers revert to each other all the time in writing where I might simply answer. Obscuratism is no excuse nowadays.

If I ring to get a quote on how much something costs then I expect an honest answer.


Kitchen installers charge either parts and labour or labour only.

Solicitors often seem think they can charge parts and labour and fudge and that the Law Society is there to protect them from the public.

Enough !!!

It can be explained in a page so why does the Law Society not demand that something lie this is sent out to each 'quotee ' .

eg

[broken link removed]
 
2Pack,

'Missing' the stamp duty in this case is easily done. Solicitors do make mistakes. You assume that it was deliberately hidden to get the client's business. Would you make that assumption if we weren't talking about a solicitor? Your threshold for 'inexcusable' is pretty low...

You say you expect to get an honest answer when you ask for a quote. You are implying that the OP got a dishonest one. Again, you make an assumption without knowing the facts. Your inclination to assume dishonesty simply reflects a general suspicion that solicitors are dishonest.

Solicitors don't think they can charge 'parts'. Government fees and taxes are not parts, as MOB explained and yet you persist with the analogy.

You claim solicitors think the Law Society is there to protect them from the public. How exactly do you know what 8,000 or so solicitors think about the Law Society and what relevance has it to the OP's question?
 
mallow said:
2Pack,
'Missing' the stamp duty in this case is easily done. Solicitors do make mistakes. You assume that it was deliberately hidden to get the client's business.
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Yes. There is no evidence that the mistake was honest is there, not one shred of paper anywhere, aw shucks.
Would you make that assumption if we weren't talking about a solicitor?
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Yes. I would take notes and would communicate in writing to confirm my understanding .
Your threshold for 'inexcusable' is pretty low.
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My threshold for all opaque pricing schemes is very low, Yes.
You say you expect to get an honest answer when you ask for a quote.
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Are you saying that I should not get an honest answer when I ask for a quote, even from a solicitor.
You are implying that the OP got a dishonest one. Again, you make an assumption without knowing the facts. Your inclination to assume dishonesty simply reflects a general suspicion that solicitors are dishonest.
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I assume that a few % here and there is fine, to suddenly surcharge by a missing amount over 10% is dishonest, yes. In my business you take a hit on your margins when you make mistakes.
Solicitors don't think they can charge 'parts'. Government fees and taxes are not parts, as MOB explained and yet you persist with the analogy.
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Another failure to understand the normal usage of the words FULL and ALL when it comes to quotes.

This will persist until the Law Society makes all solicitors send out a standard explanation of their fees (and the other fees and the other fees the way you guys explain it) and stop hiding behind restrictive practises , nay justifying them even .

Its simply not good enough for normal people who want a like for like quote.
You claim solicitors think the Law Society is there to protect them from the public. How exactly do you know what 8,000 or so solicitors think about the Law Society and what relevance has it to the OP's question?
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I care less, we non legal people should not have to appeal to a professional body in the case of a dispute with one of its members so the legal profession can keep the plaw society for all I care as long as I do not have to deal with them.
 
"I assume that a few % here and there is fine, to suddenly surcharge by a missing amount over 10% is dishonest, yes. In my business you take a hit on your margins when you make mistakes."

I don't know what your line of busines is 2pack, but if you overestimated the cost of materials when pricing a job , and if the client\customer was still happy to go ahead anyway and accept your quote, I would be surprised to be told that you would still go back to the customer to say "actually, concrete\steel\[insert whatever you like here] is coming in at less than I thought, I will reduce my bill accordingly". To do such a thing would be abnormal in business. But this is exactly what a solicitor would be obliged to do in respect of outlays.

In my line of business, I quote a flat fee for many ordinary conveyancing transactions. Sometimes they take a lot more work than I realised, and I get my margin hammered. Sometimes I get the job done unusually quickly, and my margin improves. Always, I charge to my client only the outlays actually incurred. At the start of a transaction, I can only estimate the outlays. At the end of the transaction, I can tell the client exactly what they were, to the cent.

Perhaps there is a market out there for customers who want solicitors to quote them an "all-in" price inclusive of outlays. If so, fair enough. It seems clear that this would be your preference.

The problem with this approach is that solicitors will always have more information than the client, so an "all-in" price doesn't really tell the client what the solicitor is actually getting paid. A pricing system which lacks transparency is never a good thing for the consumer. The standard pricing model for ordinary conveyancing work is very simple and- in my opinion - very transparent: outlays are charged on an as-incurred basis only, fees are quoted at a flat rate and in accordance with the competition which exists in the marketplace. I think that there is nothing at all anti-consumer about this pricing\quoting model.
 
It could be argued that an all-in pricing model would actually be more anti-consumer than splitting the charges into conveyancing fee plus outlays plus VAT. After all an all-in pricing model would necessitate spreading the cost of a priori conservatively estimated outlays over all customers thus having some customers subsidise others. In addition it would give less insight and transparency into the bottom line bill. By all means people should push for even greater transparency in charges, better service/value and highlight what they believe to be excessive or opaque charges but the habitual tarring with the same brush of all solicitors is simply tiresome and not very constructive. It's like lazy rip-off Ireland finger pointing which dismisses all allegedly high charges as rip-offs and thus deflects for highlighting the usually less common real rip-offs that actually occur. Boy who cried "wolf" stuff basically.
 
Hi all,

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone who replied to this. We are going to pay the €300 as I don't want to get into any sort of trouble with Revenue, solicitor has yet to call me back to explain things (no surprise there though), I am considering contacting Law Society to complain that he never explained it in the first place.

Thanks again.
 
Banks and Brokers never seem to tell borrowers about the stamp duty on mortgages over €254,000, it is always left to the Solicitors to tell the client and it can happen that it is overlooked. This can happen quite easily especially if you dont have the mortgage approval before you send out an estimate account / sect 68 letter to the client. By the time the Mortgage documents come in, it can happen that the stamp duty on the mortgage is overlooked. It is a mistake that happens at times, and it is unfortunate as the client would not have budgeted for the stamp duty.
 
I agree with Darth Vader, in that it should not be the duty of the solicitor alone to budget for Stamp Duty. In this day & age I think the majority of house buyers are amore astute than they used to be and that as such should be at least somewhat aware of the tax liabilities that they will incur when borrowing money, buying property etc.

That said , between your broker, bank & solicitor the issue should have been flagged if you disclosed all your details to them. If you did not advsie your solicitor that you were getting > 254 at the time of quote, they cannot read your mind or see into the future. I also believe, that despite the system in place where your solicitor furnishes your SD to the Revenue, that the liability is yours, Its your mortgage that caused the duty to arise. SD is not an outlay. Nor is VAT.
 
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