The British Retail Consortium is preparing to campaign against government plans to raise up to £600m by putting up stamp duty. BRC policy executive for property planning and regeneration Andrew Smith said: "We canvassed retailers and found that for a medium sized business making 50 new acquisitions and renewing 60 leases a year, stamp duty will go up from £119,000 to £3.2m." The BRC has now written to the Treasury demanding a meeting, and plans to raise parliamentary questions through supportive MPs next session. Smith said: "The government wants to raise revenue for public expenditure programmes, but these reforms will just cause higher start-up costs and raise barriers for investors in the UK." Stamp duty would be calculated on the number of years a lease runs. Buyers of a leasehold property valued at under #500,000 would pay stamp duty of 3% of the purchase premium of the lease plus council taxable value multiplied by the number of years of the lease. {{NEWS }}