Standard / relief bands
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Enter your purchase price and circumstances — main residence, additional property, first-time buyer — to calculate the SDLT due. The bands are progressive (each slice taxed at its own rate), the additional-property surcharge applies to the whole price, and the first-time buyer relief has its own thresholds: the calculator handles the combinations that catch buyers out.
Two contractor-relevant edges worth knowing before the numbers: company purchases attract the surcharge by default, and genuinely mixed-use property escapes it entirely — the semi-commercial advantage our specialist finance pages map.
SDLT is sliced: each portion of the price falls into its band and pays that band's rate, so the effective rate rises smoothly with price. The additional-property surcharge — for second homes, buy to lets and most company purchases — adds percentage points to every band, which on investment purchases is frequently the largest single transaction cost.
First-time buyer relief zeroes or reduces the bands up to its thresholds — with both buyers needing first-time status on joint purchases, a detail that catches couples where one has owned before.
Replacing your main residence avoids the surcharge even while owning other property — and the surcharge paid when the old home sells late is reclaimable within the window. Mixed-use property pays non-residential rates with no surcharge at all — the structural advantage that makes the shop-with-flats arithmetic work, treated fully on our semi-commercial page. Rates and thresholds change at Budgets: the calculator reflects the current rules, and we verify against the live position on every transaction.
Company purchases attract the additional-property surcharge by default, even on the company’s first property — part of the all-in cost arithmetic our limited company BTL page works through alongside the tax advantages that usually still favour the structure.
Initially yes, on the overlap — and it is reclaimable when the old main residence sells within the window. The cash-flow planning for the overlap period is part of how we structure chain-break and bridging cases.
Genuinely mixed-use property is charged at non-residential rates with no additional-property surcharge — frequently a five-figure saving on investment purchases. The commercial element must be real, and our semi-commercial page maps the treatment and its boundaries.
The relief turns on first-time status and price thresholds, not on deposit source — gifted deposits are fine. Shared ownership has election choices with their own arithmetic, which we work through on every shared ownership case.