Two charges, and only one of them is the 17%
Buying a dwelling through a company means two rules apply where one would for an individual. The first catches every company purchase: all three nations charge a company the additional-dwelling rates on any dwelling it buys, whether or not it already owns one. The second only catches England and Northern Ireland, and only above £500,000: a flat 17% on the whole price, which replaces the bands rather than adding to them.
Most limited-company landlords never meet the second one. It is charged only where no relief is claimed, and letting the property out is itself a relief. That is the part of this most commentary gets wrong, and it is worth reading before treating 17% as the price of using an SPV.
A company pays the higher rates from the first dwelling
An individual reaches the higher rates by owning more than one home. A company does not have to own anything: the purchase itself is enough. HMRC treats a purchase of a dwelling by a company as a higher rates transaction where the price is £40,000 or more and the property is not subject to a lease with more than 21 years to run. gov.wales puts it the same way, and revenue.scot charges the Additional Dwelling Supplement on most purchases of a dwelling by a non-natural person even where it has no other residential property.
So there is no first-purchase let-off for an SPV anywhere in the UK, and no first-time buyer relief either — that is for an individual buying a first home. Below £40,000 none of it applies and the standard rates are charged instead.
England and Northern Ireland at prices up to the flat-rate threshold, against what an individual with no other property would pay:
| Purchase price | Individual, no other property | Company | Extra |
|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | £500 | £8,000 | £7,500 |
| £250,000 | £2,500 | £15,000 | £12,500 |
| £400,000 | £10,000 | £30,000 | £20,000 |
| £500,000 | £15,000 | £40,000 | £25,000 |
Sources: gov.uk, gov.wales, revenue.scot.
The 17% flat rate over £500,000
gov.uk charges 17% on residential property costing more than £500,000 bought by certain corporate bodies, or ‘non-natural persons’: companies, partnerships where one or more of the partners is a company, and collective investment schemes. It was 15% until 31 October 2024. It does not apply to a company acting as trustee of a settlement, and it does not apply in Wales or Scotland at all.
It is a single rate on the whole price rather than a rate per band, so it does not behave like the rest of stamp duty. A £750,000 house bought by a company with no relief to claim is charged 17% of £750,000 = £127,500. There is no nil-rate band underneath it.
That also makes the threshold a cliff rather than a step. At exactly £500,000 the bands still apply and the charge is £40,000. One pound more and the whole price is charged at 17%, which is £85,000 — an extra £45,000 for a pound of price. Published on gov.uk.
Most company landlords are relieved from it
Relief from the flat rate is available where the property is used in a property rental business, bought by a property developer or trader, used in a trade making the property available to the public, bought by a financial institution in the course of lending, occupied by employees of the purchaser, a farmhouse, or bought by a qualifying housing co-operative. The first of those covers the ordinary buy-to-let SPV: a dwelling acquired exclusively to be let out in a property rental business run commercially and with a view to profit.
Where relief applies, HMRC charges the higher rates instead — the same table any company purchase under the threshold is charged from. That is the difference between the two columns below.
| Purchase price | Relief claimed (higher rates) | No relief (flat rate) | Cost of not claiming |
|---|---|---|---|
| £600,000 | £50,000 | £102,000 | £52,000 |
| £750,000 | £65,000 | £127,500 | £62,500 |
| £1,000,000 | £93,750 | £170,000 | £76,250 |
| £1,500,000 | £168,750 | £255,000 | £86,250 |
At £750,000 that is £62,500 between the two answers, so which one applies matters more than anything else on this page. The calculator above shows the unrelieved figure, because relief has to be claimed on the return rather than arriving by default. Turn the company setting off and the additional-property setting on to see the relieved figure.
Two conditions are worth knowing before relying on relief. It has to be claimed on the SDLT return, and it is withdrawn if the conditions stop being met inside a three-year control period beginning with the effective date — including where a non-qualifying individual, broadly the owner or someone connected with them, is permitted to occupy the dwelling, even at a market rent. A company buying a director a house is the case the flat rate was written for. Companies holding a dwelling this way may also owe Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings, which is a yearly charge rather than a purchase one and is not calculated here.
Scotland and Wales have no flat rate
Neither devolved regime copies the 17% charge. A company buying in Wales pays the higher residential rates, and a company buying in Scotland pays LBTT plus 8% Additional Dwelling Supplement on the full price. Both apply from £40,000, and neither has an equivalent of the threshold, so the price never changes which rule is in play.
The effect is that the nations swap places. Below the threshold Scotland charges a company the most of the three; above it England and Northern Ireland do, and by a distance.
| Purchase price | England and NI | Wales | Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| £250,000 | £15,000 | £14,950 | £22,100 |
| £400,000 | £30,000 | £29,950 | £45,350 |
| £750,000 | £127,500 | £73,700 | £108,350 |
Non-UK resident companies pay 2% more
The non-UK resident surcharge applies on top of all other residential rates of SDLT, including the flat rate, so a non-resident company buying above the threshold is charged 19% of the whole price rather than 17%. On the same £750,000 purchase that is £142,500 instead of £127,500. A corporate buyer is non-resident if it is not UK resident for Corporation Tax purposes, and the rules also reach some UK companies under non-UK control. It does not exist in Wales or Scotland.
What this calculator does not cover
Whether a relief is available is a question about the business, not about the price, so the calculator cannot decide it — it charges the flat rate where the company setting is on and the price is above the threshold, and the higher rates everywhere else. Trust purchases, multiple dwellings relief, linked transactions, leasehold rent and the withdrawal rules are all outside it. A company buying commercial or mixed-use property is charged from a different table entirely and has its own commercial calculator.
For the same purchase made personally rather than through a company, see stamp duty on a buy-to-let and stamp duty on a second home.