What Stamp Duty Land Tax (and Land Transaction Tax in Wales) is, and how it's worked out — without quoting rates that change.
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) is a tax you pay when you buy property or land in England or Northern Ireland over a certain value. Scotland has its own equivalent (Land and Buildings Transaction Tax) and Wales has its own (Land Transaction Tax, LTT) — the underlying idea is the same, but the rates and thresholds are set separately by each government.
SDLT and LTT rates and thresholds change periodically, and can also depend on things specific to your situation — whether it's your only property, whether you're a first-time buyer, and whether it's residential or non-residential land. Rather than publish a number here that could be out of date by the time you read it, we'd rather point you to the current rates directly from HMRC (for SDLT) or the Welsh Revenue Authority (for LTT) — your conveyancer will also confirm the exact figure that applies to your specific purchase.
Your conveyancer normally calculates the amount due, includes it in your completion statement, and submits the return and payment to HMRC (or the Welsh Revenue Authority) on your behalf shortly after completion — it's one of the disbursements shown separately on a proper conveyancing quote, rather than folded into the legal fee.
Rather than leave you without any figures at all, we've built a free SDLT calculator using the bands currently published by HMRC and the Welsh Revenue Authority — kept up to date as those rates change, rather than printed once here and left to go stale. As things stand, the standard England bands run 0% up to £125,000, 2% up to £250,000, 5% up to £925,000, 10% up to £1,500,000, and 12% above that, and the standard Wales bands run 0% up to £225,000, 6% up to £400,000, 7.5% up to £750,000, 10% up to £1,500,000, and 12% above that. Enter a property price into the calculator and it works out roughly what you'd owe as a standard buyer, a first-time buyer, or on an additional property.
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