Some 43% of all stamp duty comes from buy to let investors and holiday home purchasers - and almost half of that is accounted for by the 3% stamp duty surcharge on additional homes, introduced two years ago.

Analysis by the investment consultancy London Central Portfolio shows that as a whole, residential Stamp Duty receipts increased by £1.3bn in 2017 compared with 2016, reaching a record £9.5bn in total.

However, around a fifth of it was accounted for by the additional homes surcharge and without this the Stamp Duty take for 2017 would have been about the same as 2014.

In addition the LCP analysis shows that the most expensive 10% of properties contributed around 60% of all Stamp Duty receipts and that - unsurprisingly - Greater London contributed about 39% to total revenue. 

Two boroughs alone, The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster, contributed in excess of £0.6bn.

With UK residential transactions largely static, up 1.1% to 891,600 across the year, LCP says it is clear that the stamp duty surcharge was the main driver for increased revenue.