Stamp duty is usually the biggest single cost of moving after the deposit, and the rules differ between England and Wales. England charges Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT), administered by HMRC; Wales charges Land Transaction Tax (LTT), administered by the Welsh Revenue Authority. Both work the same way in principle: the tax is charged in slices, like income tax, so you only pay each rate on the part of the price inside that band.
Rates below are the 2025/26 rates in force when this guide was last updated. Governments do change them at budgets — the England thresholds last changed on 1 April 2025 — so always confirm with the official HMRC or Welsh Revenue Authority calculator before relying on a number.
England: SDLT bands for 2025/26
For a main residence bought by someone who is not a first-time buyer, SDLT is charged on each slice of the price. The official reference (and HMRC’s own calculator) lives at gov.uk/stamp-duty-land-tax:
Standard rates for a main residence in England & NI — each slice of the price is taxed at its own rate, not the whole price at one rate.
- Up to £125,000 — 0%
- £125,001 to £250,000 — 2%
- £250,001 to £925,000 — 5%
- £925,001 to £1.5 million — 10%
- Above £1.5 million — 12%
Main-residence rates for 2025/26; buying a second home adds a surcharge on top (higher rates in Wales). Illustration only, not tax advice.
Sources: GOV.UK — Stamp Duty Land Tax
Worked examples (England)
A £300,000 home: nothing on the first £125,000, then 2% on the next £125,000 (£2,500), then 5% on the remaining £50,000 (£2,500). Total SDLT: £5,000.
A £550,000 home: £0 + £2,500 (2% band) + 5% on £300,000 (£15,000). Total: £17,500.
Note how the slices work: moving from £249,000 to £251,000 does not suddenly tax the whole price at 5% — only the £1,000 above the threshold is taxed at the higher rate. Old horror stories about "falling into a higher band" date from the pre-2014 slab system, which no longer exists.
First-time buyer relief (England only)
If you (and anyone you are buying with) have never owned a property anywhere in the world, and the home will be your main residence, first-time buyers’ relief applies in England: 0% up to £300,000 and 5% on the portion from £300,001 to £500,000. If the price exceeds £500,000, the relief disappears entirely and the standard bands apply to the whole price.
Examples: a first-time buyer paying £300,000 pays no SDLT at all (versus £5,000 without the relief). At £400,000 the bill is 5% of £100,000 = £5,000 (versus £10,000). At £510,000 the relief is lost and the ordinary bands give £15,500.
One trap: everyone on the purchase must qualify. Buy jointly with a partner who has owned before — anywhere, ever, including inherited property — and the relief is lost for the whole transaction.
Wales: Land Transaction Tax
Wales sets its own bands, with a higher starting threshold and higher rates above it. For a main residence in 2025/26:
Worked example: a £300,000 home in Wales — nothing on the first £225,000, then 6% on the remaining £75,000. Total LTT: £4,500 (almost exactly the £5,000 an equivalent English purchase pays, reached a different way). At £450,000: £0 + 6% of £175,000 (£10,500) + 7.5% of £50,000 (£3,750) = £14,250. The Welsh Revenue Authority calculator on GOV.WALES gives the definitive figure for any price.
Important difference: Wales has no first-time buyer relief. The higher 0% threshold (£225,000) is the Welsh Government’s chosen equivalent — it benefits all buyers of cheaper homes, first-time or not.
- Up to £225,000 — 0%
- £225,001 to £400,000 — 6%
- £400,001 to £750,000 — 7.5%
- £750,001 to £1.5 million — 10%
- Above £1.5 million — 12%
Second homes, buy-to-lets and other surcharges
Buying an additional property — a second home or buy-to-let — attracts a surcharge in both countries. In England, a 5% surcharge (raised from 3% on 31 October 2024) is added to every SDLT band, so that £300,000 second home costs £5,000 + 5% × £300,000 = £20,000. Non-UK residents pay a further 2% on English purchases.
Wales charges "higher residential rates" for additional properties on its own band structure, running from 5% at the bottom to 17% at the top — the Welsh Revenue Authority’s calculator is the reliable way to get an exact figure.
If you are buying a new main residence before selling the old one, you pay the surcharge up front but can reclaim it if you sell the previous main home within three years. The definitions around "main residence", trusts, inherited shares and overseas property get genuinely intricate — this is a point to confirm with your solicitor or a tax adviser rather than a website, ours included.
What stamp duty means for your offer
Because everyone runs the same sums, thresholds shape behaviour. Asking prices cluster just below the big band boundaries, and buyer demand thins just above them — a home listed at £505,000 in England is competing with £499,950 listings that first-time buyers can reach with relief intact. If you are selling-to-buy, that asymmetry is worth knowing on both sides of your move.
For your own offer, negotiate on the total cash the purchase consumes, not the headline price. Between £250,000 and £925,000 every extra £10,000 of price adds £500 of SDLT in England — real, but rarely decision-changing. The decision-changing cases are the relief cliffs: for an English first-time buyer, agreeing £498,000 versus £502,000 is a £4,000 price gap that moves the tax bill by well over £10,000, because the relief vanishes entirely above £500,000. Around those cliffs, a firm offer just below the line has arithmetic behind it — show the seller the sums.
One legitimate lever, used honestly: genuinely removable chattels (carpets, freestanding appliances, a garden office) can be bought under a separate, fairly-valued apportionment, which reduces the price the tax applies to. HMRC scrutinises this, "fairly valued" is the operative phrase, and it only ever moves the needle near a boundary — let your conveyancer draft it, or leave it alone.
Edge cases and reliefs beyond first-time buyers
A few situations change the calculation enough to flag. Multiple dwellings relief — once popular for homes with annexes — was abolished for transactions completing from 1 June 2024, so older articles recommending it are out of date. Genuinely mixed-use purchases (a shop with a flat above, a home with agricultural land) can fall under non-residential rates, which are calculated differently; six or more dwellings bought in one transaction can also be treated as non-residential.
Transfers that are not simple purchases — divorce settlements, transfers between spouses, gifts with a mortgage attached, buying out a joint owner — each have their own SDLT treatment, and getting the classification wrong in either direction is expensive. The pattern across all of these: the arithmetic is mechanical but the classifications are not, and the cost of a conveyancer or tax adviser looking properly is trivial against the sums involved. This guide gives you the shape of the system; the return filed in your name deserves professional eyes.
When and how you actually pay
Your solicitor or conveyancer files the return and pays the tax on completion day out of the funds you send them — you will rarely touch it yourself. The legal deadlines are 14 days from completion for SDLT and 30 days for LTT, but in practice it is handled same-day.
Budget for it as cash on top of the deposit: stamp duty cannot normally be added to the mortgage, because lenders lend against the property’s value, not your tax bill. When working out what a realistic total budget buys, it pays to run the numbers the other way — see our guide on how to value a home for the evidence side of that decision.