Stamp duty is widely disliked as an opportunistic tax which adds a further burden onto the already difficult challenge of buying a home.

Hence the decision by the Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch to promise its abolition as the spear-tip of her political fightback during the autumn. Even those who wouldn’t go so far agree that the duty is ripe for reform to alleviate the burden on homebuyers.

Now it turns out that this outdated tax is set to hit renters, too. As if they didn’t face enough problems already in a costly market with limited supply, new legislation means a growing number of tenants will be charged stamp duty on the supposed value of their lease.

So how did this scourge of the housing market extend its grasping reach into the pockets of tenants? First spotted by tax lawyer Dan Neidle, the issue arises from the Renters Rights Act, which abolishes fixed-term leases.

The thing Neidle noticed, and which the Government seems to have failed to spot when legislating, is that the longer a tenancy runs, the higher the value of the lease becomes – meaning hundreds of thousands in open-ended tenancies will have to pay stamp duty by tipping over the valuation threshold.

Before the Act, vanishingly few one-year tenancies involved enough rent to pass the £125,000 value threshold for the tax. When your tenancy becomes open-ended, though, the lease is valued by counting not just one year’s rent but........

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