England & NI
Stamp Duty Land Tax rates and bands
One standard scale, four variations on it, and the scale it replaced on 1 April 2025.
Checked by Radif Partners · Editorial policy · How we calculate
Stamp Duty Land Tax in England and Northern Ireland has used the same five residential bands since 1 April 2025: nothing on the first £125,000, 2% on the slice up to £250,000, 5% up to £925,000, 10% up to £1,500,000 and 12% on anything above. Each rate touches only its own slice, so a £450,000 house costs £12,500, an effective rate of 2.8%. Four other tables sit beside that one. First-time buyers pay nothing up to £300,000 and 5% up to £500,000. Anyone who ends completion day owning two dwellings pays 5% more on every band, which takes the same house to £35,000. Non-UK residents add 2% on every residential band. A company buying a home above £500,000 without a relief pays 17% of the whole price. Shops, offices and mixed-use buildings follow their own scale with a nil band to £150,000. The Budget of 26 November 2025 changed none of these figures.
Your price through the SDLT bands
SDLT at standard residential rates
£12,500
| Highest band reached | 5% |
| Tax on the slice in that band | £10,000 |
| Effective rate on the whole price | 2.8% |
| First-time buyer / second home | £7,500 / £35,000 |
Standard residential rates
The standard residential scale
This is the table that applies to an individual buying a single home in England or Northern Ireland, or replacing a main residence sold on or before completion day. HMRC calls it the residential rate; conveyancers often call it the standard rate. It has applied to every purchase completing on or after 1 April 2025.
| Portion of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £125,000 | 0% |
| £125,001 to £250,000 | 2% |
| £250,001 to £925,000 | 5% |
| £925,001 to £1,500,000 | 10% |
| Above £1,500,000 | 12% |
The five bands are slices, not brackets. A price is cut into pieces at £125,000, £250,000, £925,000 and £1,500,000, each piece is taxed at its own rate and the results are added. Northern Ireland never devolved the tax, so a terrace in Newry and a terrace in Norwich follow the same scale. Scotland and Wales left SDLT behind in 2015 and 2018 and now publish their own tables (LBTT rates and Land Transaction Tax rates).
A £450,000 purchase, band by band
Take a semi-detached house bought for £450,000 by a couple selling their flat on the same day. Their price reaches the third band and stops well short of the fourth.
| Band | Amount in band | Rate | Tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| £0 to £125,000 | £125,000 | 0% | £0 |
| £125,001 to £250,000 | £125,000 | 2% | £2,500 |
| £250,001 to £925,000 | £200,000 | 5% | £10,000 |
| Total | £450,000 | 2.8% | £12,500 |
The bill is £12,500. Almost all of it comes from the 5% slice: the first two bands together contribute only £2,500. That pattern holds for most prices between £250,000 and £925,000, where each extra £1,000 on the offer adds £50 of tax.
First-time buyer scale
When every buyer has never owned a home anywhere in the world and will live in the property, the standard scale is swapped for a shorter one. It has only two lines and a ceiling.
| Portion of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £300,000 | 0% |
| £300,001 to £500,000 | 5% |
The ceiling is absolute. At £500,000 the relief scale gives £10,000; a pound more and the whole price falls back to the standard scale. The conditions, and the traps for couples and inherited shares, are on the first-time buyer relief page.
Higher rates for additional dwellings
Since 31 October 2024 the surcharge for a buyer who will own more than one dwelling at the end of completion day has been 5% on every band, the nil band included. The resulting scale starts at 5% on the first pound, which is why a modest buy-to-let carries a bill even when a home at the same price would pay little.
| Portion of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £125,000 | 5% |
| £125,001 to £250,000 | 7% |
| £250,001 to £925,000 | 10% |
| £925,001 to £1,500,000 | 15% |
| Above £1,500,000 | 17% |
The surcharge does not apply to a purchase below £40,000, to mixed-use property, or where the buyer is replacing a main residence. Who counts as owning another home, spouses included, is covered on the second home page.
Non-resident rates
A further 2% applies on every residential band when at least one buyer spent fewer than 183 days in the UK during the year before completion. It stacks on whatever scale would otherwise apply: standard, first-time buyer, higher rates or the company rate.
| Portion of the price | UK resident | Non-resident, one home | Non-resident, additional home |
|---|---|---|---|
| Up to £125,000 | 0% | 2% | 7% |
| £125,001 to £250,000 | 2% | 4% | 9% |
| £250,001 to £925,000 | 5% | 7% | 12% |
| £925,001 to £1,500,000 | 10% | 12% | 17% |
| Above £1,500,000 | 12% | 14% | 19% |
The surcharge has its own residence test and its own refund route, both explained on the non-resident surcharge page.
The company rate
A company buying a dwelling for more than £500,000 pays 17% of the entire price, not of a slice, unless a relief applies. Rental businesses, developers and traders are the usual relief cases; when a relief applies, or the price is lower, the company pays the higher rates instead. On a £800,000 flat the flat rate means £136,000, against £70,000 at higher rates with a relief (companies buying homes).
Non-residential and mixed-use scale
Commercial property and any single purchase mixing homes with other use sit on a separate three-line scale. Since 1 June 2024, buying six or more dwellings in one transaction also lands here, because multiple dwellings relief was abolished for SDLT.
| Portion of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £150,000 | 0% |
| £150,001 to £250,000 | 2% |
| Above £250,000 | 5% |
HMRC’s own example is a £275,000 purchase, which comes to £3,250. The commercial property calculator runs the same scale for any price, with the Scottish and Welsh equivalents beside it.
Every scale at five prices
| Price | Standard | First-time buyer | Additional home | Non-resident | Company, no relief |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £200,000 | £1,500 | £0 | £11,500 | £5,500 | £11,500 |
| £350,000 | £7,500 | £2,500 | £25,000 | £14,500 | £25,000 |
| £600,000 | £20,000 | £20,000 | £50,000 | £32,000 | £102,000 |
| £1,200,000 | £63,750 | £63,750 | £123,750 | £87,750 | £204,000 |
| £2,000,000 | £153,750 | £153,750 | £253,750 | £193,750 | £340,000 |
Read across a row and the size of each surcharge appears. At the lower prices the higher rates add the most in proportion, because they turn a free nil band into a taxed one. Above £500,000, the company column jumps to a single rate on the full price, and the gap with every other column widens with each extra pound.
The first-time buyer column tells its own story. Up to £500,000 it sits below the standard column; from £600,000 upwards the two are identical, because the relief has gone entirely rather than tapering away. A buyer choosing between a £480,000 flat and a £520,000 one is comparing £9,000 with £16,000 of tax, a gap far larger than the difference in price would suggest.
Rates before 1 April 2025
Between 23 September 2022 and 31 March 2025 the standard scale had four bands instead of five, with a nil band to £250,000, and first-time buyers paid nothing up to £425,000 with relief available to £625,000. The temporary thresholds had a fixed end date and lapsed on schedule.
| Portion of the price | Rate |
|---|---|
| Up to £250,000 | 0% |
| £250,001 to £925,000 | 5% |
| £925,001 to £1,500,000 | 10% |
| Above £1,500,000 | 12% |
| Price | Before April 2025 | Since April 2025 | Extra tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| £250,000 | £0 | £2,500 | £2,500 |
| £400,000 | £7,500 | £10,000 | £2,500 |
| £700,000 | £22,500 | £25,000 | £2,500 |
| £1,000,000 | £41,250 | £43,750 | £2,500 |
The increase is capped: once a price passes £250,000, every buyer pays the same extra £2,500, because the only change in the standard scale sits below that point. Two other changes came earlier, on 31 October 2024: the higher rates surcharge rose from 3% to 5% and the company rate from 15% to 17%. The April 2025 changes page compares both periods for movers and first-time buyers.
Where the rates come from
The bands are set in section 55 of the Finance Act 2003, the higher rates in Schedule 4ZA, the first-time buyer relief in Schedule 6ZA and the non-resident surcharge in Schedule 9A. HMRC publishes the current figures on its residential rates page, and the official SDLT calculator uses the same scales. Every figure on this page is calculated from those published values, so a change to the bands updates every table at once.