UK Stamp Duty Calculator

What is stamp duty in the UK?

"Stamp duty" is the everyday name for three separate property taxes, one per nation: Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) in England and Northern Ireland, Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) in Scotland, and Land Transaction Tax (LTT) in Wales. All three tax the same thing — buying residential property — but they use different bands, different thresholds and different first-time buyer rules, so the same price produces a different bill depending on which nation the property is in.

On a £350,000 home, for example, a standard purchase costs £7,500 in SDLT (England & NI), £8,350 in LBTT (Scotland) and £7,500 in LTT (Wales) — pick a nation above and enter your own price to see the exact band-by-band build-up.

Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) in England & Northern Ireland

SDLT is charged in bands: only the slice of the price inside each band is taxed at that band's rate. The current bands (from 1 April 2025) are 0% up to £125,000, 2% up to £250,000, 5% up to £925,000, 10% up to £1.5m and 12% above. On a £350,000 standard purchase that's £7,500 — an effective rate of 2.14%.

First-time buyers pay 0% up to £300,000 and 5% on the slice from £300,000 to £500,000 — on £350,000 that's just £2,500. There's a hard cliff: buy for £500,001 or more as a first-time buyer and the relief disappears completely, and the full standard rates apply to the whole price — it isn't tapered.

Additional properties (second homes, buy-to-let) pay every SDLT band plus 5 percentage points, giving 5% / 7% / 10% / 15% / 17% bands. On £350,000 that's £25,000 — because every band is exactly +5pt over standard, the surcharge portion always works out to precisely 5% of the price. Non-UK residents (not in the UK for 183+ days in the year before completion) pay a further flat 2% of the whole price on top of whatever else applies — on a £350,000 standard purchase that's an extra £7,000, taking the total to £14,500.

LBTT in Scotland

Scotland replaced SDLT with Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in 2015, and it has its own bands: 0% to £145,000, 2% to £250,000, 5% to £325,000, 10% to £750,000 and 12% above. On £350,000 that's £8,350 in LBTT — an effective rate of 2.39%, roughly £850 more than the equivalent SDLT bill in England.

First-time buyers get a smaller relief than in England — the nil-rate band rises from £145,000 to £175,000, worth up to £600. On £350,000 a first-time buyer pays £7,750.

The big structural difference is the Additional Dwelling Supplement (ADS): buying an additional dwelling (second home, rental, holiday let) adds a flat 8% of the entire purchase price — not banded like SDLT's surcharge, and not capped. On £350,000 that's a flat £28,000 on top of the standard LBTT, for a total of £36,350. ADS has risen three times: 3% before 2019, 4% from January 2019, 6% from December 2022 and 8% since 5 December 2024. It's reclaimable if you sell your previous main residence within 36 months.

LTT in Wales

Wales' Land Transaction Tax uses its own bands too: 0% to £225,000, 6% to £400,000, 7.5% to £750,000, 10% to £1.5m and 12% above. On £350,000 that's £7,500 — an effective rate of 2.14%, which happens to land on exactly the same total as the England & NI SDLT example at this price, despite completely different bands.

Wales has no first-time buyer relief at all — the Welsh Government confirms this explicitly ("There's no first-time buyers' relief in Wales"). A first-time buyer in Wales pays exactly the standard rate, same as any other owner-occupier; there's no toggle-off amount to show.

Higher rates apply to second homes, buy-to-let and company purchases — a dedicated schedule (not "standard + X%"): 5% to £180,000, 8.5% to £250,000, 10% to £400,000, 12.5% to £750,000, 15% to £1.5m and 17% above (from 11 December 2024). On £350,000 that's £24,950.

Same price, three nations — the comparison

Because SDLT, LBTT and LTT use completely different bands and reliefs, the same purchase price produces three different bills. On a standard purchase at £350,000: England & NI (SDLT) £7,500, Scotland (LBTT) £8,350, Wales (LTT) £7,500. At this price, England & Northern Ireland is cheapest. Change the price above and the comparison table recalculates all three live.

The gap widens for additional properties: Scotland's flat 8% ADS applies to the whole price regardless of how it's banded, while England's and Wales's surcharges are banded like their standard rates — so the ranking between nations can flip depending on buyer type and price.

First-time buyer relief: the England cliff and the Wales gap

First-time buyer relief exists in England & NI (up to £500,000, then a hard cliff back to full standard rates) and in Scotland (a smaller, uncapped nil-rate uplift to £175,000) — but not at all in Wales. If you're comparing a move across the England/Wales border as a first-time buyer, that difference alone can outweigh the underlying band differences.

Surcharges: additional property, non-residents

All three nations charge more for a second home, buy-to-let or company purchase: England & NI adds 5 points to every SDLT band, Scotland adds a flat 8% ADS on top of standard LBTT, and Wales uses a dedicated higher-rate schedule for LTT. Only England & NI has a documented non-UK-resident surcharge — a flat extra 2% on top of whatever else applies. We haven't found an equivalent non-resident surcharge for LBTT or LTT in our sources, so it isn't modelled for Scotland or Wales.

If you're financing the purchase with a buy-to-let mortgage in England or Wales, see our buy-to-let mortgage calculator — it uses the same England & NI additional-property SDLT bands to work out your cash invested and cash-on-cash return alongside your borrowing and yield.