PropertyStamp Duty Mortgage Affordability Rent vs Buy

Tax year 2026/27 · Rest of UK · annual

Stamp Duty Calculator

SDLT, LBTT and LTT for any UK buyer type in 2026/27.

Tax year

Region

Schedule

Your details

Property price

Buyer typeRegion

SDLT to pay

£5,000

Effective rate: 1.67% of £300,000

Band breakdown

£0 – £125,000 (0.0%)	£125,000 → £0
£125,000 – £250,000 (2.0%)	£125,000 → £2,500
£250,000 – £300,000 (5.0%)	£50,000 → £2,500

Total SDLT

£5,000

Interactive scenarios

Tax and deductions, your way

Tax year

Region

Pay schedule

Salary £45,000

Net (monthly)

£2,806

Income tax (monthly)

£541

NI (monthly)

£216

Effective rate

20.2%

Modelled on a 5% pension. Showing monthly figures, rest of UK, tax year 2026/27.

The full guide

Everything worth knowing about Stamp Duty

Worked examples with real figures, the rules underneath the number, and the traps that catch people out.

Stamp Duty Calculator: what you will pay, band by band

The stamp duty calculator works out Stamp Duty Land Tax on a home in England or Northern Ireland using the 2026/27 bands: nothing on the first £125,000, then 2%, 5%, 10% and 12% on the slices above it. On a £300,000 main home the bill is £5,000, and this page shows exactly where that figure comes from.

Enter your price and buyer type above and the calculator applies first time buyer relief or the additional property surcharge for you. The sections below walk through the bands, the reliefs and the deadlines, so the number at completion holds no surprises.

The price on the contract decides the bill, slice by slice.

The tax is due in completion day money

Your solicitor collects the SDLT with the purchase funds and files the return. Budget for it inside the completion balance, not as a bill that arrives later.

SDLT bands and rates for 2026/27

A main home in England or Northern Ireland pays 0% up to £125,000, 2% from £125,000 to £250,000, 5% from £250,000 to £925,000, 10% from £925,000 to £1.5 million and 12% above £1.5 million. Each rate applies only to the part of the price inside its band, never to the whole price.

Work a £600,000 purchase through the bands and the pattern is clear. The first £125,000 costs nothing, the next £125,000 costs £2,500 at 2%, and the remaining £350,000 costs £17,500 at 5%. The total is £20,000, an effective rate of about 3.3% on the whole price.

That slicing is why the calculator asks for the full price rather than a band. Two buyers £10,000 apart in price can be only a few hundred pounds apart in tax, and the gap widens solely on the slice that crossed the line.

Non residential and mixed use purchases, such as a shop with a flat above it, use a separate and lower set of bands that tops out at 5%. The buyer type and the property type both belong in the calculation before anyone quotes you a figure.

Prices cluster just under the £250,000 and £925,000 lines for a reason. The slice above a line pays the higher rate, so a £255,000 price carries only £250 of tax on the top £5,000, yet buyers still negotiate hard at the boundaries because the steps grow steeper further up the scale.

SDLT bands

SDLT bands on a main home

Up to £125,000

£125,001 to £250,000

£250,001 to £925,000

£925,001 to £1.5m

10%

Above £1.5m

12%

Each rate applies only to the slice of the price inside that band, never to the whole price.

First time buyer relief: nothing to pay up to £300,000

First time buyers pay no SDLT on the first £300,000 of the price, then 5% on the slice from £300,000 to £500,000. A £400,000 first home therefore costs £5,000 in tax, where a mover pays £10,000 on the same house.

The relief has a hard edge. Buy above £500,000 and it disappears completely rather than shrinking, so a £550,000 first home pays the standard bands on the full price, which comes to £17,500. A buyer near that line should price the cliff into the offer, because £1 over the limit can cost thousands in extra tax.

Every buyer on the deed must be a first time buyer, and none of you can have owned property anywhere in the world, including an inherited share. One previous owner in a couple removes the relief for both of you, however the mortgage and the deposit are split.

The 5% surcharge on additional properties

Buy a second home, a buy to let or a holiday home in England or Northern Ireland and a 5% surcharge lands on the whole price, on top of the standard bands. A £300,000 second home pays the usual £5,000 plus £15,000 of surcharge, £20,000 in total.

The surcharge applies when you own another residential property anywhere in the world at the end of completion day and the new home costs £40,000 or more. Replacing your main home is the main escape: sell the old one first, or complete both sales on the same day, and the standard rates apply.

Sell the previous main home within three years of buying the new one and you can claim the surcharge back from HMRC. Married couples and civil partners count as one unit for this test, which catches many buyers who assumed separate finances meant separate treatment.

Buyers who replace a main home but complete on the new property first pay the surcharge on the day, then reclaim it from HMRC once the old home sells inside the three year window. The reclaim goes through an amended return or the standalone online claim, and the money usually returns within weeks rather than months, so the surcharge becomes a cash flow problem rather than a permanent cost.

Worked examples: three buyers, three very different bills

A mover buying a £300,000 main home pays £5,000. The first £125,000 is free, the next £125,000 pays 2%, which is £2,500, and the final £50,000 pays 5%, which is another £2,500. Only the slice inside each band pays that band's rate, so moving £1 over a threshold never reprices the whole purchase.

A first time buyer at the same £300,000 pays nothing at all, because the price sits inside the £300,000 nil rate slice of the relief. Stretch that first home to £400,000 and the bill becomes £5,000, charged at 5% on the £100,000 above £300,000.

An investor buying a £300,000 rental pays £20,000. Same house, same price, four times the tax. Buyer type moves the SDLT bill more than any single band does, which is why the calculator asks who is buying before it asks anything else.

Buying through a company: the 15% flat rate

A company or another non natural person buying a dwelling worth more than £500,000 pays a flat 15% of the whole price, not the sliced residential bands. A £600,000 property bought through a company therefore carries £90,000 of SDLT where an individual mover pays £20,000.

Reliefs exist for genuine property rental businesses, developers, traders and properties open to the public, and a company that qualifies pays the normal rates with the additional property surcharge instead. The relief must be claimed in the return and the business must keep operating, because HMRC can withdraw it if the facts change within three years.

Holding a high value home inside a company can also trigger the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings, a yearly charge on properties worth more than £500,000. That combination of a 15% entry bill and an annual charge is why most individual buyers hold homes in their own names even when a company looks attractive for other reasons.

When SDLT is paid, and the Scotland and Wales position

The SDLT return and the payment are due within 14 days of completion, and your solicitor or conveyancer files both as part of the completion process. The money leaves with your completion balance, so it needs to sit inside your budget from exchange onwards rather than be found afterwards.

Late filing triggers penalties and interest even when the tax itself is small, and the buyer carries the legal duty even though the solicitor does the paperwork. Keep the SDLT5 certificate safe, because you need it to prove the return was filed and to register the property.

In practice your solicitor completes the SDLT1 return online, sends the money from the completion funds, and passes you the certificate. Without that certificate the Land Registry will not register you as the owner, so a missing return blocks the legal finish of the purchase, not just the tax position.

These bands cover England and Northern Ireland. Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and Wales charges Land Transaction Tax, each with its own bands and its own first time buyer rules, so a Dumfries or Cardiff purchase needs the figures for that nation rather than the ones on this page.

Common stamp duty mistakes that cost buyers money

Treating the rate as a flat percentage of the price heads the list. SDLT is sliced into bands like income tax, so a £300,000 home is not £15,000 at 5%. It is £5,000, and anyone budgeting on the flat figure overstates the bill and may walk away from a house they could afford.

Forgetting the surcharge on a partner's property comes next. Couples count as one unit, so a first purchase in your sole name can still attract the 5% surcharge if your spouse already owns a home, even one bought long before you met.

Buyers also miss the three year reclaim window after selling a previous main home, and they assume fixtures and fittings can be stripped out of the price without evidence. Chattels genuinely separate from the property can reduce the taxable price, but HMRC expects the split to be justifiable, not invented on completion day.

The last trap is the linked transaction. Buy two properties from the same seller under one deal, for example a house and the field behind it sold separately, and HMRC taxes you on the combined value at the bands that total reaches. Splitting one purchase into several contracts does not split the bill, and the calculator figure for a single property understates a linked purchase every time.

Where the Stamp Duty Calculator gets its figures

Rates, bands and thresholds follow published HMRC and gov.uk figures for the 2026/27 tax year, held in one table that every tool reads. April arrives, the table changes, and the results move together.

Earlier years stay available through the year selector, so a late self assessment runs on the numbers that applied at the time rather than today's.

Some cases still need an accountant. K codes carrying negative allowances, bespoke sacrifice arrangements, the annual allowance taper for very high earners, and anything involving two employments at once.

About this calculator

The Stamp Duty Calculator works out exactly how much SDLT you pay when buying a residential property in England and Northern Ireland for the 2026/27 tax year, including first-time buyer relief and the second-home surcharge.

Frequently asked questions

How much stamp duty will I pay on a £300,000 house?+

On a £300,000 home in England as a standard buyer in 2026/27 you pay £5,000: nothing on the first £125,000, 2% on the slice from £125,000 to £250,000 (£2,500), and 5% on the slice from £250,000 to £300,000 (£2,500). A first-time buyer pays nothing at all on a £300,000 purchase thanks to first-time buyer relief.

Do first-time buyers pay stamp duty in the UK?+

First-time buyers in England and Northern Ireland pay no SDLT on the first £300,000 of a property costing up to £500,000, then 5% on the portion above £300,000. If the property costs more than £500,000, normal SDLT rates apply with no relief. Scotland and Wales run separate reliefs under LBTT and LTT.

What is the second-home stamp duty surcharge?+

Buying an additional residential property in England or Northern Ireland adds a 5% surcharge on top of each SDLT band. That means even the first £125,000 slice, normally tax-free, is taxed at 5% for second homes and buy-to-lets. The surcharge applies on top of the normal band calculation.

When do I pay stamp duty and who pays it?+

You must file an SDLT return and pay the tax within 14 days of completion, and your solicitor or conveyancer normally handles this for you. The buyer always pays stamp duty, never the seller. Late filing can trigger penalties and interest from HMRC.

Is stamp duty different in Scotland and Wales?+

Yes. Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) and Wales charges Land Transaction Tax (LTT), each with its own bands and thresholds. Our calculator covers all three: choose your region and it applies the right 2026/27 rates automatically.

Can stamp duty be added to the mortgage?+

Some lenders let you add stamp duty to the mortgage, but you then pay interest on it for the whole term, which makes an expensive tax even more expensive. Most buyers pay it from savings or their deposit funds on completion day instead.

Are new-build properties exempt from stamp duty?+

No, new-builds are not exempt. The same SDLT, LBTT or LTT rates apply. Schemes like shared ownership have their own specific rules, and first-time buyer relief still applies to eligible new-build purchases under £500,000 in England.