SDLT Calculator – Stamp Duty for England, Scotland and Wales in One Tool

One home, three nations, three tax bills

The same price, taxed under each nation’s standard main-home rates. On a £350,000 home, Scotland’s LBTT is the priciest of the three — and the gap widens or flips at other prices, which is exactly why a single-nation calculator is not enough.

Buying the home this tax is charged on

Stamp duty is only one line of the purchase. These tools work the mortgage side of the same price.

How it works

Three choices set the rulebook, then the price is taxed one slice at a time.

The math behind the default example

Three stamp duty traps worth knowing

A cliff edge that swallows relief in one step, three rival designs for taxing second homes, and a border that changes the bill.

Stamp duty rates at a glance

The complete band tables for all three nations — the same figures the calculator above is using.

England and Northern Ireland — SDLT

First-time buyers: 0% up to £300,000, then 5% — but only when the price is £500,000 or less. Additional property: add 5 points to every rate above. Non-UK residents: add a further 2 points to every rate.

Scotland — LBTT

First-time buyers: the nil band rises to £175,000. Additional property: the same LBTT, plus the Additional Dwelling Supplement at a flat 8% of the whole price (charged once the price reaches £40,000).

Wales — LTT

Wales runs two separate band structures — the higher-rate bands start lower and climb faster, which is why they cannot be shown as one shared table. There is no first-time buyer relief in Wales: main rates apply to every main-home purchase.

One home, three bills: £350,000 in each nation

The same price, three rulebooks, three different answers. The comparison is the reason this calculator covers all three nations.

On a £350,000 standard purchase, England and Northern Ireland charge SDLT of £7,500, an effective rate of 2.14 percent. The slices are £125,000 at 0 percent, £125,000 at 2 percent (£2,500), and £100,000 at 5 percent (£5,000). Scotland charges LBTT of £8,350 on the same price: £145,000 at 0 percent, £105,000 at 2 percent (£2,100), £75,000 at 5 percent (£3,750), and £25,000 at 10 percent (£2,500). Wales charges LTT of £7,500: £225,000 at 0 percent and £125,000 at 6 percent (£7,500). The three totals differ by £850 between the cheapest and the dearest, which is small against the price of the home and large against the cost of getting the jurisdiction wrong, because the tax is charged by the nation the property sits in, not by the buyer’s residence or preference.

The pattern behind the three totals is worth understanding, because it reverses at other prices. Scotland’s larger tax-free slice, £145,000 against England’s £125,000 and Wales’s £225,000, helps at lower prices, but Scotland’s bands rise faster, reaching 10 percent at £325,000, while England does not reach 10 percent until £925,000 and Wales reaches 7.5 percent at £400,000. At £350,000 Scotland is already into its 10 percent band while England is still at 5 percent, which is why Scotland costs more at this price despite the larger tax-free slice. At a lower price, Wales’s £225,000 tax-free slice dominates, and at a much higher price the top rates — 12 percent in all three nations, reached at different thresholds — reshape the ranking again. There is no cheapest nation in general. There is only a cheapest nation at a given price, for a given buyer type, and the calculator exists to answer that specific question.

Buyer type reshapes the ranking further. First-time buyer relief in England removes tax up to £300,000 and charges 5 percent on the slice from £300,000 to £500,000, after which relief switches off entirely — the cliff edge the page’s traps section describes, where one pound over £500,000 costs £5,000 of relief in a single step. Scotland’s first-time buyer relief works differently, and Wales has its own structure, while additional-property purchases carry surcharges in all three nations under three different designs: England’s additional-property rates, Scotland’s Additional Dwelling Supplement at 8 percent, and Wales’s higher rates, which start at 5 percent on the first slice and rise to 17 percent above £1,500,000. A buyer who qualifies for relief in one nation may not qualify in another, and a buyer purchasing an additional property faces a surcharge design that can change the total by tens of thousands. The nation and the buyer type must both be entered correctly, because either one alone gives the wrong rulebook.

Effective rate versus top rate: the confusion that overstates every bill

The top band reached is not the rate paid. Only the top slice pays the top rate, and the effective rate is always lower.

On the default, the top band reached is 5 percent, and the effective rate is 2.14 percent. The gap is the whole point of slice taxation: the first £125,000 is taxed at 0 percent, the next £125,000 at 2 percent, and only the final £100,000 at 5 percent, so the blended rate across the full price is far below the top rate. At £400,000 the same structure gives £10,000 of SDLT and an effective rate of 2.50 percent, still half the 5 percent top rate, because £250,000 of the price sits in the 0 and 2 percent bands. A buyer who multiplies the whole price by the top rate will overstate the bill by roughly double at these prices, and that overstatement is the commonest stamp duty error, made by buyers, sellers, and headline writers alike.

The effective rate rises with price, but slowly, because each new slice dilutes the lower bands rather than replacing them. As the price climbs through the 10 percent band above £925,000 and the 12 percent band above £1,500,000 in England, the effective rate creeps toward those figures without ever reaching them, because the lower slices remain taxed at their lower rates forever. At very high prices the effective rate approaches 12 percent asymptotically, but it takes a price many times the top threshold to get close. For ordinary purchases, the effective rate sits in the low single digits, and that is the figure to use when budgeting the tax as a share of the price, when comparing nations, and when judging whether a price increase is affordable: the tax on the increase is the top rate, while the tax on the whole is the effective rate, and the two answer different questions.

Marginal thinking is the right tool for the questions buyers actually ask at the edge. If a purchase price rises by £10,000 within the 5 percent band, the extra tax is £500, at the top rate, not £214 at the effective rate, because the extra £10,000 sits entirely in the top slice. If a price crosses a band boundary, the extra tax splits: part at the old rate, part at the new one, exactly as the bracket slices work. And if a first-time buyer’s price crosses the £500,000 relief cliff, the extra tax is not a slice at all but the whole relief, £5,000 in the page’s example, because relief switches off rather than tapering. Three different edge cases, three different marginal answers, and all three follow from the slice structure once it is understood. The effective rate is for budgeting the whole. The marginal rate is for pricing the next pound.

When stamp duty is due, and what else the purchase costs

The tax is one line in a completion statement, and it has a deadline that does not wait for the paperwork.

Stamp duty is charged on completion, when the property changes hands, and the return and payment follow a deadline set by the relevant revenue authority: HMRC for SDLT in England and Northern Ireland, Revenue Scotland for LBTT, and the Welsh Revenue Authority for LTT. The deadlines differ by nation, and missing them brings penalties and interest, so the completion date, not the exchange date or the mortgage offer date, is the date to diary. In practice the conveyancer or solicitor handling the purchase usually files the return and pays the tax from completion funds, which is why many buyers never handle the payment directly, but the liability is the buyer’s, and a conveyancer’s delay does not transfer it. Confirming that the return has been filed, and keeping the certificate, matters for registration: the land registry generally requires evidence that the tax has been dealt with before the transfer is registered.

The tax is also only one line among several at completion, and budgeting for it alone understates the cash needed. A purchase typically involves a deposit, mortgage arrangement and valuation fees, conveyancing fees, survey costs, and removal costs, in addition to the tax, and the deposit alone is usually far larger than the tax on an ordinary purchase. A £350,000 purchase with a 10 percent deposit needs £35,000 of deposit against £7,500 of SDLT, so the tax is about a fifth of the deposit, not the dominant cash item. Where the tax does dominate is at higher prices and for additional properties, where surcharges push the tax into tens of thousands, and where it can exceed the deposit on a low-deposit purchase. The calculator’s bill should therefore be added to the other completion costs, not compared with them in isolation, and the total cash required should be confirmed with the conveyancer before exchange, when the price is still negotiable, rather than at completion, when it is not.

Relief and exemption claims belong in the same conversation, before exchange. First-time buyer relief, multiple dwellings relief where it applies, and the various exemptions for transfers between spouses, on divorce, or by inheritance each have conditions that must be met at the time of the transaction, and some cannot be claimed retrospectively if the transaction was structured without them. A buyer who might qualify should ask the conveyancer explicitly, with the facts of the purchase, rather than assuming the calculator’s standard rates apply: the calculator models standard, first-time buyer, and additional-property cases, but it cannot know whether a particular buyer’s circumstances meet a relief’s conditions. The cost of asking is a question. The cost of not asking can be the whole relief.

Finally, remember that stamp duty rates change, and the rates on this page are those in force for 2026, with SDLT bands as set from 1 April 2025. A purchase that completes after a rate change is taxed at the rates in force on completion, not at the rates when the offer was made or the calculator was run, so a budget prepared months before completion should be re-run close to the completion date. Rate changes are usually announced in budgets and take effect on a stated date, and the gap between announcement and effect is a window in which bringing completion forward, where possible, can save the difference. That window is narrow, and it should not drive a purchase decision on its own, but for a buyer already near completion it is worth knowing, because the tax is one of the few purchase costs that can change by announcement between offer and completion.

Budgeting a purchase with the tax included

From a headline price to a cash requirement, in four additions that should be done before exchange.

Start with the price, and run it through this calculator with the correct nation and buyer type, to get the tax. On the default that is £7,500 on £350,000 in England, £8,350 in Scotland, and £7,500 in Wales, and at £400,000 in England it is £10,000. Those figures are the tax lines, and they should be written down alongside the price, not held in memory, because they change with every price movement during negotiation. A £10,000 price reduction within the 5 percent band saves £500 of tax as well as £10,000 of price, so the cash saving of a negotiated reduction is the price saving plus the tax saving, and a seller who concedes £10,000 has conceded £10,500 of buyer cash. Negotiators who forget the tax leave money on the table in both directions.

Next, add the deposit, which is set by the mortgage, not by the tax. A 10 percent deposit on £350,000 is £35,000, a 20 percent deposit is £70,000, and the deposit plus the tax together are the two largest cash items at completion for most buyers. Add the mortgage fees, conveyancing, survey, and moving costs as estimated by the lender and conveyancer, and the sum is the cash required at completion, before any retention or snagging allowance. That sum, not the price alone, is the figure to compare with savings, because a buyer who can afford the price but not the price plus tax plus fees cannot complete, and the discovery should happen before exchange, when the deposit at risk is the exchange deposit, rather than at completion, when the whole purchase is at risk.

Then, stress-test the cash requirement at the edges that matter for this purchase. What if the price rises by £25,000 during negotiation, what if the buyer type changes because an existing property is not sold in time and the purchase becomes an additional property, what if completion slips past a rate-change date. Each scenario changes the tax, and the additional-property scenario changes it most, because surcharges apply to the whole price under the relevant design, not just to the top slice. Running those scenarios in the calculator before exchange turns surprises into contingencies, and contingencies into a larger cash buffer or a renegotiated price, either of which is better than a completion-day shortfall.

Finally, keep the tax certificate with the purchase file, permanently. The stamp duty return, the payment confirmation, and the land registry entry that follows are the evidence that the tax was dealt with, and they are needed on any future sale, remortgage, or dispute about the property’s history. A purchase file that contains the price, the mortgage offer, the survey, and the tax certificate is complete. A file missing the tax certificate is a file with a gap that will need filling later, at greater effort than filing it now. The calculator’s job ends at the estimate. The file’s job is to prove the estimate was acted on, and both deserve the same care.

Leasehold purchases and the net present value calculation

Buying a leasehold property with a substantial ground rent or premium can involve a second SDLT calculation on the lease itself, based on the net present value (NPV) of the rent payable over the term of the lease. For residential leases, no SDLT is due on the rent element where the NPV is at or below the residential threshold (currently £125,000); above it, SDLT is charged at 1% on the portion of the NPV above the threshold, in addition to any tax on the premium paid. The NPV calculation discounts future rent at a statutory rate (3.5% per annum) over the lease term, so a long lease at a modest ground rent can still produce an NPV above the threshold.

Most ordinary residential lease purchases — a flat bought with a long lease at a peppercorn or nominal ground rent — produce no rent-element tax, because the NPV is far below £125,000. The calculation matters for short leases at high rents, for leases with escalating ground rents (where the doubling or RPI-linked clauses push the NPV up), and for commercial leases, where the thresholds and rates differ (a 0% band to £150,000 of NPV, then 1% to £5 million and 2% above). If the lease has a premium and rent, both elements are computed and added. Conveyancers run this calculation as part of the transaction; the point of understanding it is to recognise when a lease’s rent makes the tax position worse than the headline price suggests, and to ask the conveyancer to confirm the NPV figure before exchange.

Reliefs, filing deadlines, and getting it wrong

Several reliefs can reduce or remove SDLT, and they are claimed on the return, not granted automatically. Multiple dwellings relief was abolished for transactions with an effective date on or after 1 June 2024, so it is no longer available for new purchases. Reliefs that remain include those for certain transfers between spouses and civil partners, transfers on divorce or dissolution, and purchases by registered social landlords and charities in qualifying circumstances, each with its own conditions. First-time buyer relief and the higher-rates rules are covered in the companion article; this section’s point is that reliefs are transaction-specific and evidence-dependent, and a relief assumed but not claimed on the return is a relief lost.

The filing and payment deadline is 14 days from the effective date of the transaction — usually completion. The SDLT return must be filed and the tax paid within that window, and late filing attracts penalties and interest even where the tax itself is small. Buyers who discover an error after filing — a wrong price, a missed relief, a misclassified property — can amend the return within the permitted period, and should do so promptly: an overpayment reclaimed late is still an overpayment, but an underpayment discovered by HMRC rather than volunteered attracts a harsher penalty regime. Keep the completion statement, the contract, and the SDLT certificate together; the certificate is needed to register the purchase at the Land Registry, and the registration cannot proceed without it.

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