Stamp Duty Calculator

How stamp duty is actually worked out

Stamp Duty Land Tax is a slice tax, not a cliff tax. Since 2014 you pay each rate only on the part of the price that falls inside its band, exactly like income tax. Buying at £250,001 does not suddenly cost thousands more than buying at £250,000 — it costs five pence more. The table this calculator prints is the same shape HMRC uses, so you can check any conveyancer's figure line by line.

The bands for England and Northern Ireland from 1 April 2025 are: nothing 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% on anything above that.

Worked example: a £350,000 home mover

The first £125,000 is free. The next £125,000 (from £125,000 to £250,000) is taxed at 2%, which is £2,500. The remaining £100,000 sits in the 5% band and adds £5,000. Total stamp duty is £7,500, an effective rate of 2.14% on the whole purchase. That £7,500 is cash you need on completion day — lenders will not normally add it to the mortgage, so it belongs in your deposit spreadsheet next to legal fees and searches.

The same house, a first-time buyer

First-time buyer relief lifts the nil-rate threshold to £300,000 and charges 5% between £300,000 and £500,000. On the same £350,000 purchase, the first £300,000 is free and only £50,000 is taxed at 5%: £2,500. The relief is worth exactly £5,000 here and drops the effective rate to 0.71%.

The relief has a hard ceiling. At £500,001 it vanishes entirely rather than tapering, so a first-time buyer pays £15,000 on a £500,000 flat and £10,000 more than that — the full standard bill of £25,000 minus nothing — on a £600,000 one. Around that line, negotiating the price down to £500,000 can be worth more than any fixture-and-fittings haggle.

Second homes and buy-to-let

Buying an additional residential property adds a 5% surcharge on the entire price, on top of the standard bands, whenever the price is £40,000 or more. On our £350,000 example that is 5% of £350,000, or £17,500, taking the total to £25,000 — over three times the home mover's bill. The surcharge also catches people who have not sold their previous home yet. If you replace your main residence within 36 months of the sale, you can claim the surcharge back from HMRC, but you have to pay it first.

Rates change often — check the date

SDLT thresholds have moved five times in six years. The pandemic holiday took the nil-rate band to £500,000 in July 2020, it stepped down to £250,000 in 2021, the 2022 mini-budget lifted it to £250,000 permanently with £425,000 for first-time buyers, and on 1 April 2025 those temporary levels expired back to £125,000 and £300,000. The second-home surcharge rose from 3% to 5% on 31 October 2024. Any calculator you find in a search result may be frozen at an older set of numbers, so check which date it claims to use before you budget from it.

What this calculator does not cover

Several situations need a specialist rather than a band table. New leasehold purchases can attract an extra charge on the net present value of the rent, which is separate from the price-based figure here. Companies buying residential property over £500,000 usually face the flat 17% rate. Non-UK residents pay a further 2% surcharge on top of everything else. Mixed-use and multiple-dwelling purchases use commercial rates, and shared ownership buyers choose between paying on the initial share or on the market value up front.

Use this figure to budget and to sanity-check the completion statement your solicitor sends. The legal filing itself is theirs to do: the SDLT return and payment are due within 14 days of completion, and HMRC charges interest and penalties from day 15.