Stamp Duty Calculator (SDLT) 2026-27 Trending

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is payable on property purchases in England and Northern Ireland above certain thresholds. From April 2025 the standard nil-rate band is £125,000, cut back from £250,000 and reversing the temporary relief introduced in 2022. Rates then rise through bands: 2% on £125,001 to £250,000, 5% on £250,001 to £925,000, 10% on £925,001 to £1.5m and 12% above £1.5m. Each rate touches only the slice of the price inside its own band rather than the whole purchase.

First-time buyers purchasing their first home up to £500,000 pay no SDLT on the first £300,000, then 5% on the portion from £300,001 to £500,000. Properties above £500,000 do not qualify for first-time buyer relief at all, and standard rates then apply to the entire price. A first home at exactly £300,000 costs nothing in SDLT, where a standard buyer at the same price pays £5,000, made up of £2,500 at 2% and £2,500 at 5%.

If you already own a property and are buying an additional one, a second home or a buy-to-let, a 5% surcharge applies to the entire purchase price on top of standard rates, as it has since 31 October 2024. Because the surcharge lands on the full price rather than only the amount above a threshold, it creates a sharp cliff edge. A £300,000 second home costs £20,000, being £5,000 of standard SDLT plus £15,000 of surcharge, and a £500,000 second home costs £40,000. The surcharge does not apply to a property bought for less than £40,000. Buyers who are not UK resident for SDLT purposes, broadly anyone present in the UK for fewer than 183 days in the 12 months before the purchase, pay a further 2% of the price on top of whichever rates apply, including first-time buyer and additional-property rates, so a non-resident first-time buyer pays £6,000 on a £300,000 home. This calculator handles all three buyer types and has a separate tick box for the non-resident surcharge.

Running the standard bands across a few prices shows the shape of the curve. A £500,000 purchase attracts £15,000, £750,000 comes to £27,500, and £1M reaches £43,750. The worked example further down uses £350,000, which produces £7,500 and an effective rate of 2.14%, a useful reminder that the headline band rate is never what you pay across the whole price.

Buyers who complete on a new main residence before selling the old one pay the surcharge upfront and claim it back later. Sell the previous home within 36 months and you can reclaim it online or by post through gov.uk, as long as the claim is made within 12 months of the sale or 12 months of the filing date of the SDLT return for the new home, whichever is later. Outside the 36-month window a refund is possible only in exceptional circumstances, such as government restrictions that prevented the sale. The refund covers the surcharge only, never the standard SDLT underneath it. Chain difficulties force this overlap more often than buyers expect, and higher-rate landlords increasingly use a limited company structure instead, which is still caught by the 5% surcharge but allows mortgage interest to be fully deducted.

Scotland and Wales run separate systems under their own tax authorities, with a return due within 30 days of completion in each. Scottish LBTT charges nothing to £145,000, then 2% to £250k, 5% to £325k, 10% to £750k and 12% above, alongside an Additional Dwelling Supplement of 8%, raised from 6% in December 2024. Welsh LTT starts at £225,000, then 6% to £400k, 7.5% to £750k, 10% to £1.5M and 12% above. Welsh higher rates are a separate band table rather than a surcharge, running 5%, 8.5%, 10%, 12.5%, 15% and 17%, each band 1pp higher since 11 December 2024. For first-time buyers England charges no more than either nation up to £500,000, and usually less: a £300,000 first home costs nothing in SDLT, against £4,000 of LBTT in Scotland, where first-time buyer relief only lifts the nil-rate band to £175,000, and £4,500 of LTT in Wales, which has no first-time buyer relief at all. The 2% non-resident surcharge is an SDLT rule and does not apply in Scotland or Wales.

Legitimate planning is narrower than it used to be. Multiple Dwellings Relief was abolished for SDLT on 1 June 2024, so it is no longer available in England or Northern Ireland, though it survives in Wales for LTT, where the minimum tax rule rose from 1% to 3% on 13 February 2026. Mixed-use property, a flat above a shop for instance, falls under a different and lower band table capped at 5%. Separating out chattels such as carpets, curtains and kitchen appliances has limited application and attracts HMRC scrutiny. Spousal transfers can trigger SDLT where a mortgage moves with the property. Steer clear of SDLT mitigation schemes altogether, because the GAAR catches them and penalties plus interest follow.