A couple in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, have managed to utilise a towpath 'loophole' to cut their colossal stamp duty bill by hundreds of thousands of pounds.   

Alan Wood and Elizabeth Veitch bought a three-storey seven-bedroom freehold house overlooking the River Thames in Marlow for £4.5million in June 2023. 

The property site included the main house, garden, wall, gate, towpath, and a chain link fence on the river side. 

Every part of the property is private property, with the exception of the towpath. The general public have a 'right of way' only over the towpath section.

A first-tier tax tribunal described the towpath as 'a busy section of a busy public right of way which forms part of the Thames Path, a 185 mile National Trail running from the source of the Thames in the Cotswolds to Woolwich.'

After purchasing the property, Mr Wood and Ms Veitch filed a stamp duty land tax return showing the property was fully residential and paid £586,250 to HM Revenue & Customs. 

But, accountants working on the couple's behalf later submitted an amended stamp duty form that, by contrast, treated the property as mixed use on the basis the towpath and riverside area were non-residential. 

As a result of this information, stamp duty owed, the accountants said, was £214,500. They claimed a refund of £371,750 in stamp duty from HMRC. 

HMRC launched an inquiry and concluded that no refund was due, with closure notices issued in October 2024. 

The couple appealed these notices to HMRC and also lodged appeals. 

Amid the appeals process, Mr Wood set up a video camera on the first floor of his house pointing towards the towpath. 

The video suggested the towpath was used by around 850 people every day, comprising individuals, families, dog walkers, cyclists and joggers. 

The couple felt they could never sit and relax on the towpath or leave personal belongings on it, as they risked being stolen. 

Mr Wood and Ms Veitch had had to remove trespassers looking for Instagram photo opportunities 'once or twice' on their property. 

In a decision last month, a first-tier tax tribunal said the towpath did not form part of the grounds of the couple's dwelling. 

It found, based on previous case law, the towpath was non-residential and allowed the appeal, meaning the couple could be refunded £371,750 in stamp duty from HMRC.

In a decision on 28 February 2026, the tax tribunal decision said: 'Having concluded that the towpath does not form part of the grounds of the house, it follows that the property does not consist entirely of residential property and therefore the appeal succeeds.'  

An HMRC spokesman told This is Money: 'We note the tribunal's decision and are considering the verdict.'

Speaking to This is Money, Tim Stovold, a partner at Moore Kingston Smith LLP, said: 'HMRC are generally resistant to refund claims where house buyers find out after the event that the inclusion of a paddock, storage unit or, in this case, a towpath in their property purchase allows them to rely on the SDLT rules which allow the non-residential rates to be applied to the whole transaction value and not just to the value of the non-residential element. 

'A number of tax tribunals have commented this application of the rules can result in counter intuitive results so this is an area of law that will be creeping up the agenda for the Chancellor to reform in a future budget.'

Labour is continuing to pull in increasing amounts of revenue from stamp duty.

Homebuyers paid £12.3billion in stamp duty between January and October 2025, according to Coventry Building Society's analysis of HMRC statistics published in November.

That represents a 21 per cent rise from the £10.2billion paid over the same period last year. 

In October 2025 alone, homebuyers paid a total of £1.5billion in stamp duty, the highest in the year as of that point. 

Meanwhile, forecasts today from the OBR after the spring statement show stamp duty is forecast to rake in £28billion annually by 2030/31. 

Many buyers were hit by a stamp duty hike from 1 April 2025, as Labour opted not to extend a tax break that had been in place since 2022.