Stamp duty calculator

Figures rates as published on 22 August 2026 Last checked 22 August 2026 Where these come from

A £295,000 home costs £4,750 in Stamp Duty Land Tax in England or Northern Ireland — but £4,350 in Scotland and £4,200 in Wales, because they are three separate taxes rather than one. Change the price and the nation below.

Three taxes, not one

Property transaction tax is devolved, and the three UK regimes have diverged further than most people expect. Stamp Duty Land Tax applies in England and Northern Ireland, collected by HM Revenue & Customs. Land and Buildings Transaction Tax applies in Scotland, collected by Revenue Scotland. Land Transaction Tax applies in Wales, collected by the Welsh Revenue Authority.

They differ in more than their numbers. Wales offers no first-time buyer relief at all and sets a higher nil-rate band instead. Scotland charges its supplement on additional properties as a flat percentage of the whole price, where England, Northern Ireland and Wales use a separate, steeper band table. Those are structural differences, and they are why a calculator built for one regime gives the wrong answer in another rather than merely an imprecise one.

What catches people out

• There is no such thing as UK stamp duty. England and Northern Ireland charge Stamp Duty Land Tax, Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, and Wales charges Land Transaction Tax. They are three separate taxes run by three authorities with different bands, different thresholds and different reliefs — not one tax with regional rates.
• Wales has no first-time buyer relief at all. England, Northern Ireland and Scotland both have one; Wales instead sets the highest nil-rate band of the three, at £225,000. A calculator built for England will quietly hand a Welsh first-time buyer a discount that does not exist.
• Scotland charges its Additional Dwelling Supplement as a flat 8% of the entire purchase price, not as steeper bands. On a £150,000 second home that is £12,000 on top of £100 of banded tax — where the English higher rates on the same price reach only 7%, and only on the slice above £125,000. The two work on completely different principles at the cheap end of the market.
• First-time buyer relief in England and Northern Ireland stops dead at £500,000. At exactly £500,000 a first-time buyer pays £10,000; at £500,001 the relief is gone entirely and standard rates apply to the whole price. One pound of purchase price costs several thousand pounds of tax, and it is the sharpest cliff edge in UK property taxation.
• The rate you reach is not the rate you pay. Every one of the three taxes charges in slices — a percentage on the portion of the price within each band — so reaching the 10% band does not mean paying 10% of the price. This has been true since 2014 and is still the most common misunderstanding.
• Whether the higher rates apply is not something a price box can decide. It depends on whether you will own another residential property worth £40,000 or more when the purchase completes, whether you are replacing a main residence, whether you are buying with someone who owns one, and whether a company is involved. This calculator applies the surcharge when you tell it to.

Questions

Why is the figure different in Scotland or Wales?

Because it is a different tax. Property transaction tax is devolved: Scotland has charged Land and Buildings Transaction Tax since 2015 and Wales has charged Land Transaction Tax since 2018, each set by its own government and collected by its own authority. The bands differ, the thresholds differ and the reliefs differ.

The comparison under the result shows the same price under all three, which is usually more revealing than any explanation.

Do I pay the top rate on the whole price?

No, and this is the thing people most often get wrong. Each rate applies only to the portion of the price falling inside its band. A £295,000 house in England pays nothing on the first £125,000, 2% on the next £125,000, and 5% only on the last £45,000 — £4,750 in total, not 5% of £295,000.

The breakdown shows each slice separately for exactly this reason.

When do the higher rates for additional properties apply?

Broadly, when you will own more than one residential property at the end of the day the purchase completes. The detail is genuinely involved: it depends on property owned anywhere in the world, on shares in property owned jointly, on whether you are replacing a main residence you have sold within the last three years, and on whether anyone you are buying with owns one. Companies pay the higher rates on essentially every residential purchase.

This calculator does not try to decide that for you — it applies the surcharge when you select "additional property". The authorities' own guidance is linked below.

Is the tax on the price or on the mortgage?

On the price — more precisely on the "chargeable consideration", which is everything given for the property. That is normally the purchase price, but it can include the value of anything else transferred as part of the deal. The size of your mortgage or deposit makes no difference.

What does this calculator not cover?

Quite a lot, and property tax has more corners than most. It does not cover non-residential or mixed-use property, leasehold transactions where tax is due on the rent as well as the premium, multiple dwellings, purchases of six or more properties, the 2% surcharge for non-UK residents buying in England and Northern Ireland, companies, trusts, or any of the reliefs for particular kinds of buyer.

It covers the ordinary case: one residential property, bought freehold, by an individual. If your purchase is not that, the authority's own calculator and guidance are linked at the bottom.

Are these rates current?

They were read from the three authorities' own pages on 22 August 2026, and each page is linked below along with that date. Unlike income tax, these rates do not change on a fixed annual cycle — they change when a government announces they change, sometimes with a day's notice. Scotland's supplement moved on 5 December 2024 and Wales's higher rates on 11 December 2024.

If a figure here disagrees with the source, the source is right.

All three regimes were checked against these pages on 22 August 2026. Property tax rates change on announcement rather than on an annual cycle, sometimes at very short notice — if a figure here disagrees with the source, the source is right and we want to know.

Take-home pay calculator

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