Wales
Land Transaction Tax rates and bands
The main residential table of the Welsh Revenue Authority, read slice by slice and set against England and Scotland.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How we calculate
Land Transaction Tax on a home in Wales is charged at the main rates when the buyer will own no other dwelling: nothing on the first £225,000, 6% on the part up to £400,000, 7.5% up to £750,000, 10% up to £1,500,000 and 12% above. These bands have applied since 10 October 2022. Each rate covers only its slice of the price, so the Welsh Revenue Authority’s example of a £280,000 home pays £3,300, and a £450,000 family house £14,250. The nil band is the widest in the United Kingdom, which makes Wales cheaper than England for a single home up to about £350,000. Every buyer of a single home uses this table, because Wales has no first-time buyer relief and no surcharge for buyers living abroad. Second homes and company purchases go through a separate higher-rates table. The return and the tax are due within 30 days of completion.
Land Transaction Tax at main rates
LTT, main residential rates
£3,300
| Rate on your last pound | 6% |
| England or NI, same price | £4,000 (£700 more there) |
| Scotland, same price | £3,600 (£300 more there) |
Main rates: a buyer who will own no other dwelling at the end of the day, first-time buyers included.
The main table since 10 October 2022
| Portion of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £225,000 | 0% |
| £225,001 to £400,000 | 6% |
| £400,001 to £750,000 | 7.5% |
| £750,001 to £1,500,000 | 10% |
| Above £1,500,000 | 12% |
Wales took over the tax on property purchases on 1 April 2018, when Land Transaction Tax replaced SDLT under the Land Transaction Tax and Anti-avoidance of Devolved Taxes (Wales) Act 2017. The main residential bands were last changed on 10 October 2022, when the nil band was raised to £225,000. They have not moved since.
The shape of the table is unusual. It has the widest nil band of the three nations, then no gentle band at all: the first taxed pound pays 6%. After that the steps are modest, to 7.5%, 10% and 12%, and the higher thresholds sit where England puts them, at £1,500,000 for the top rate.
The authority’s £280,000 example
| Band | Amount in band | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| £0 to £225,000 | £225,000 | 0% | £0 |
| £225,001 to £400,000 | £55,000 | 6% | £3,300 |
| Total | £280,000 | 1.2% | £3,300 |
Only the £55,000 above the nil band is taxed, all of it at 6%, which gives £3,300. A family house at £520,000 reaches the third band:
| Band | Amount in band | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| £0 to £225,000 | £225,000 | 0% | £0 |
| £225,001 to £400,000 | £175,000 | 6% | £10,500 |
| £400,001 to £750,000 | £120,000 | 7.5% | £9,000 |
| Total | £520,000 | 3.8% | £19,500 |
The bill is £19,500, and more than half of it comes from the 6% slice between £225,001 and £400,000, which every buyer above £400,000 pays in full: £10,500.
Wales against England and Scotland for a single home
| Price | LTT, Wales | SDLT, England & NI | LBTT, Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| £200,000 | £0 | £1,500 | £1,100 |
| £225,000 | £0 | £2,000 | £1,600 |
| £250,000 | £1,500 | £2,500 | £2,100 |
| £300,000 | £4,500 | £5,000 | £4,600 |
| £350,000 | £7,500 | £7,500 | £8,350 |
| £400,000 | £10,500 | £10,000 | £13,350 |
| £600,000 | £25,500 | £20,000 | £33,350 |
| £1,000,000 | £61,750 | £43,750 | £78,350 |
Below £225,000, Wales charges nothing at all, while England has taxed every pound above £125,000 and Scotland every pound above £145,000. Above the nil band, the 6% rate closes the gap fast. By our calculation, from £351,000 a buyer of a single home pays more in Wales than in England, and the difference grows on expensive homes. Against Scotland, the Welsh main rates are never higher at any price we tested, because the Scottish table reaches 10% at £325,000.
These comparisons hold for buyers of one home who are not first-time buyers in England. An English first-time buyer pays nothing up to £300,000, which reverses the picture for first purchases; the page on first-time buyers in Wales works through that case.
Trading up the Welsh ladder
Because the nil band is wide and the next rate is high, the tax on each move up the ladder rises faster in Wales than the price does. Follow a couple who start in a £210,000 terrace in Newport: they pay £0. Their next move, to a £330,000 semi-detached house in the Vale of Glamorgan, costs £6,300. A later move to a £480,000 detached house costs £16,500. The price has a little more than doubled across the three purchases; the tax has gone from nothing to a five-figure sum.
Seen as a share of the price, the bill is 1.9% at £330,000, 3.4% at £480,000 and 5.8% at £900,000. The headline rates of 7.5% or 10% are never what a buyer actually pays on the whole price, since the nil band and the lower slices always pull the average down. That matters when budgeting: a buyer who assumes 7.5% of £480,000 would set aside £36,000, more than twice the real figure.
Near the border, the choice between these tables is made by the land, not by the buyer. A house in Chepstow pays LTT and one a few miles away in Gloucestershire pays SDLT, so two homes at £400,000 on either side of the Wye cost £10,500 and £10,000. Where a single property straddles the line, each part is taxed by its own nation, and the conveyancer files two returns.
What the bands mean in Cardiff and Swansea
The UK House Price Index gives the average price paid in each Welsh council area. Run through the main table, the two largest cities look like this:
| Home | Average price | LTT, main rates | SDLT at the same price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cardiff, average home | £272,252 | £2,835 | £3,612 |
| Cardiff, terraced house | £262,241 | £2,234 | £3,112 |
| Cardiff, detached house | £519,113 | £19,433 | £15,955 |
| Swansea, average home | £205,383 | £0 | £1,607 |
| Swansea, terraced house | £169,318 | £0 | £886 |
| Swansea, detached house | £327,342 | £6,140 | £6,367 |
The table shows how much depends on which side of £225,000 a home falls: below it the Welsh bill is nothing, above it every £10,000 costs £600 until £400,000. City pages for Cardiff and Swansea go into each housing stock in more detail.
Buyers living outside the UK
Wales charges no surcharge for non-resident buyers. Someone moving back from Singapore to a house in Monmouthshire, or an overseas buyer purchasing a flat in Cardiff Bay, uses the main table if it will be their only dwelling. The test that does reach abroad is the one for additional homes: a flat still owned in another country counts as a dwelling, and with it the purchase moves to the higher table. On a £350,000 house that is the difference between £7,500 and £24,950. In England, the same buyer could face a 2% surcharge on top of everything else.
A second table for additional homes
The main rates are only half of the Welsh system. A buyer who will own two or more dwellings at the end of the day, and any company buying a home, pays the higher residential rates instead. These are a separate table, not a surcharge on this one, and they start at 5% from the first pound: £17,950 on the same £280,000 home. The higher rates guide covers who pays them.
Commercial and mixed-use property
| Portion of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £225,000 | 0% |
| £225,001 to £250,000 | 1% |
| £250,001 to £1,000,000 | 5% |
| Above £1,000,000 | 6% |
Shops, offices, farmland and mixed-use purchases use this table. Its nil band matches the residential one, but the taxed slices are lighter until £1,000,000, after which 6% applies. A £400,000 shop with a flat above costs £7,750. Wales also has a relief for purchases of several dwellings at once, which this site does not model.
The 30-day return
The return and the payment are due within 30 days of the effective date, which is normally completion. Your conveyancer files the return with the Welsh Revenue Authority and pays from the funds you send. A mistake can be corrected by amending the return within 12 months of the filing date. To check a figure, the Welsh Revenue Authority calculator uses the same bands as our LTT calculator.