Do You Pay Taxes When Selling a House?

No — you do not pay Stamp Duty when you sell a house. Stamp Duty Land Tax is a buyer's tax, triggered by the purchase, and it never lands on the seller. For most people selling their main home there is no tax to pay at all: Private Residence Relief removes Capital Gains Tax, and the UK has no general sales tax on a home. Tax only bites if you are selling a second home, a buy-to-let, an inherited property or a home you have not lived in throughout. And there is a twist most sellers miss — if you bought your next home before selling this one, completing your sale is what unlocks a Stamp Duty refund worth thousands.

Do you pay Stamp Duty when you sell a house?

No. This is the single most common misunderstanding I hear from sellers, and the answer is refreshingly simple: Stamp Duty Land Tax is charged on the acquisition of property, not the disposal of it. The person buying your house pays it. You do not.

The legal mechanism matters here, because it explains why there is no grey area. SDLT is triggered by a chargeable transaction — someone acquiring a chargeable interest in land. Selling is not an acquisition. Your buyer's solicitor files an SDLT return and pays HMRC within 14 days of completion, usually out of the purchase funds. Nothing on that return concerns you, and no part of the bill is apportioned to you.

The same logic holds across the UK, even though the tax has three different names. In England and Northern Ireland it is Stamp Duty Land Tax. In Scotland it is Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, collected by Revenue Scotland. In Wales it is Land Transaction Tax, collected by the Welsh Revenue Authority. Three regimes, three sets of bands — and in all three, the buyer pays.

Where sellers get confused is that they are usually buying as well as selling. You complete on the sale in the morning and the purchase in the afternoon, one solicitor handles both, and a single completion statement lists the Stamp Duty alongside your sale proceeds. It looks like the sale attracted the tax. It did not. The tax belongs entirely to the purchase, and if you were selling and not buying — downsizing into a rental, moving in with family, emigrating — there would be no Stamp Duty on your side of the transaction at all.

Stamp Duty rates in 2026 — for the home you are buying

If you are moving on, the rates below are the ones that apply to your purchase. For a single property that will be the only residential property you own, HMRC charges SDLT in slices:

Portion of the purchase price	SDLT rate
Up to £125,000	0%
£125,001 to £250,000	2%
£250,001 to £925,000	5%
£925,001 to £1.5 million	10%
Above £1.5 million	12%

First-time buyers pay nothing up to £300,000 and 5% on the portion from £300,001 to £500,000, with the relief withdrawn entirely above £500,000. If the purchase means you will own more than one residential property, add 5% to every band. Non-UK residents add a further 2%. You can run your own figures through our Stamp Duty calculator.

None of that is a seller's cost. But it is worth understanding, because Stamp Duty shapes what your buyer can afford, and that shapes your price. A buyer stretching to £260,000 on your house is also finding £5,500 in tax on top of their deposit and fees. When SDLT thresholds move, offers cluster just under the new bands — which is why homes priced at £252,000 so often sit while homes at £249,995 sell.

The refund almost nobody tells sellers about

Here is the part of this question that actually puts money in your pocket, and it is buried on almost every page that ranks for it.

If you bought your new home before you managed to sell your old one, then on the day you completed the purchase you owned two properties. HMRC does not care that you intended to sell. You were required to pay the higher rates — an extra 5% on the whole purchase price — as though you were buying a second home.

That money is not gone. Selling your previous main residence is precisely what entitles you to claim it back. Two conditions apply, and both are hard deadlines:

• You must sell your previous main residence within 36 months of completing the new purchase.
• You must claim within 12 months of that sale, or within 12 months of the filing date of the SDLT return on the new property — whichever is later.

Miss either and the refund is gone. HMRC does operate a narrow exceptional-circumstances route for sales that slip past three years for reasons genuinely outside your control, but it is not a safety net you should plan around.

A worked example

Say you buy your new home for £320,000 while your old house is still on the market. Standard SDLT on £320,000 is £6,000 (nothing on the first £125,000, £2,500 on the next £125,000, £3,500 on the remaining £70,000). Because you own two homes on completion day, you add the 5% surcharge on the full £320,000 — another £16,000. You hand over £22,000.

Element	Amount
Standard SDLT on £320,000	£6,000
Higher-rate surcharge (5% of £320,000)	£16,000
Paid on completion	£22,000
Refundable once the old home sells within 36 months	−£16,000
Net Stamp Duty cost	£6,000

Sixteen thousand pounds turns on one thing: whether your old house completes inside the window. That reframes the whole question. Sellers ask "will selling cost me Stamp Duty?" when the sharper question is "is my sale going to complete in time to get my Stamp Duty back?"

Scotland and Wales: same trap, different numbers

In Scotland the equivalent surcharge is the Additional Dwelling Supplement, and it rose from 6% to 8% in December 2024 — the steepest in the UK. The reclaim rules mirror England's shape: sell the previous main residence within 36 months, claim within 12 months of that sale. Revenue Scotland has been explicit that it cannot consider exceptional circumstances where the conditions are not met. A chain that collapses at month 34 and pushes your sale to month 37 costs you the entire supplement, and there is no appeal on sympathy.

On a £320,000 Scottish purchase, 8% is £25,600 riding on a completion date.

Wales charges higher residential rates of Land Transaction Tax on the same principle, with a three-year window to sell the previous main residence and claim the difference back. The Welsh Revenue Authority typically takes 15 to 20 working days to process a claim, and has a limited extension route tied to specific circumstances such as unsafe cladding.

If you are anywhere near one of those deadlines with a sale that is drifting, the arithmetic changes completely. A buyer who completes in weeks rather than months is not a luxury at that point — it is the difference between recovering a five-figure sum and writing it off. That is the situation where it is worth seeing what genuine cash house buyers would pay, and weighing the discount against the refund you would otherwise lose.

Capital Gains Tax: the tax that actually can apply to sellers

Stamp Duty is a red herring for sellers. Capital Gains Tax is the real one — and for most people it also comes to nothing.

CGT is charged on the gain, not the sale price. Sell for £300,000 a house you bought for £220,000 and the gain is £80,000, less the costs of buying and selling and any capital improvements. That is the number the tax applies to, if it applies at all.

Your main home: Private Residence Relief

You pay no Capital Gains Tax on your home if all of the following are true:

• You have one home and it has been your only or main residence for the whole time you owned it.
• You have not let part of it out — having a single lodger does not count against you.
• No part of it has been used exclusively for business. Working from the spare room that doubles as a guest room is fine; converting the garage into a dedicated salon is not.
• The grounds, including all buildings, are under half a hectare — a little over one acre.
• You did not buy it specifically to sell at a profit.

Meet all five and Private Residence Relief applies automatically. You do not claim it, you do not report the sale, and there is nothing to pay. That covers the overwhelming majority of people who arrive at this page.

Two details are worth knowing even if you think you qualify cleanly. The final nine months of ownership always qualify for relief regardless of what you did with the property in that period, as long as it was your only or main home at some point — which protects you if you move out before the sale completes. And that extends to 36 months if you are disabled or have moved into a care home, which matters enormously for families selling a parent's house.

If you own two homes, you can nominate which one counts as your main residence, but the nomination must be made within two years of first having that combination of properties. Married couples and civil partners get one main residence between them, not one each.

Second homes, buy-to-lets and inherited property

No Private Residence Relief, so the gain is taxable. For 2026/27 the rates on gains are:

Your position	CGT rate on the gain
Basic rate taxpayer (gain sits within the basic band)	18%
Higher or additional rate taxpayer	24%
Portion of a gain pushed above the basic band	24%
Trustees and personal representatives	24%

Everyone gets an annual exempt amount of £3,000 for 2026/27. The basic rate band for the year is £37,700, and the test is applied by adding your taxable gain to your taxable income — which is why a landlord on a modest salary can still pay 24% on most of a large gain.

A worked example on a let property

You bought a flat for £150,000 in 2014 and sell it in 2026 for £235,000. You spent £8,000 on a new kitchen and bathroom (capital improvement, deductible) and £4,200 on agent and legal fees across the two transactions. Your taxable income is £30,000.

Step	Figure
Sale price	£235,000
Less purchase price	−£150,000
Less capital improvements	−£8,000
Less buying and selling costs	−£4,200
Gain	£72,800
Less annual exempt amount	−£3,000
Taxable gain	£69,800
Taxed at 18% (the £7,700 of unused basic band)	£1,386
Taxed at 24% (the remaining £62,100)	£14,904
Total CGT due within 60 days	£16,290

Taxable income of £30,000 leaves £7,700 of the £37,700 basic band unused, so only that slice attracts 18%. Everything above it is taxed at 24%. Note what that means in practice: a landlord who assumed "I'm a basic rate taxpayer, so 18%" would have budgeted around £12,600 and been £3,700 short.

If you lived in the property before letting it, you get partial relief for the period of occupation plus the final nine months, worked out as a simple fraction of the ownership period. And if you let out part of the house while still living there, Letting Relief may apply — the lowest of the Private Residence Relief already given, £40,000, or the gain attributable to the letting. Letting Relief does not apply if the whole house was let. Our guide to reducing Capital Gains Tax on a property sale goes through the legitimate reliefs in detail, and the CGT calculator will give you a working estimate.

The 60-day deadline that catches people out

This is the rule that generates penalties, and it is not widely known. If you owe CGT on a UK residential property, you must report it and pay it within 60 days of the completion date — through HMRC's standalone property account, not through Self Assessment. The old system of settling up at the following January deadline has not applied to residential property since October 2021.

Sixty days is tight. You need the completion date, the original purchase price, the improvement costs, the acquisition and disposal costs, and an idea of your income for the year — and if you are the executor of an estate or you inherited the property years ago, digging out the probate valuation takes time. Start assembling that paperwork when you accept the offer, not when the money lands.

The deadline also interacts with how you sell, and nobody seems to mention it. Across Ready Steady Sell's 2025 data, a sale to a vetted cash buyer completed in an average of 27 days. That is a genuine advantage in almost every respect — but it means your 60-day CGT clock starts less than a month after you agree terms, leaving you roughly 33 days to file and pay. If the gain is significant, get the figures ready before you accept.

What is not a tax — but still takes a bite

Sellers often lump every deduction together as "tax". These are costs, and unlike tax they are negotiable, avoidable or comparable:

Cost	Who pays	Is it a tax?
Estate agent commission	Seller	No — commercial fee, negotiable
Conveyancing / solicitor	Seller	No — professional fee
Energy Performance Certificate	Seller	No — legal requirement, not a tax
Mortgage early repayment charge	Seller	No — lender's contractual charge
Removals and storage	Seller	No
Stamp Duty Land Tax	Buyer	Yes — but not yours
Capital Gains Tax	Seller, if applicable	Yes

Agent commission is the largest of these for most sellers, and it is the one people accept most passively. VAT sits on top of it, which is a tax — but it is a tax on the agent's service, not on your house. Our breakdown of what it really costs to sell a house sets out current ranges, and the cost of selling calculator totals them for your figures.

Inherited property: probate value is your starting point

Selling a house you inherited raises the question more sharply, because two different taxes are in play and people conflate them.

Inheritance Tax, if any was due, is settled by the estate before the property passes to you. It is not your liability as a beneficiary and it is not triggered by your sale.

Capital Gains Tax is separate and it is yours. Crucially, your base cost is not what the deceased paid decades ago — it is the probate value, the market value at the date of death. So if a house was valued at £240,000 for probate and you sell it eighteen months later for £252,000, your gain is £12,000, not the lifetime appreciation of the property. After the £3,000 exemption and selling costs, there may be little or nothing to pay.

This is also where a slow sale costs money in a way that has nothing to do with tax. An empty inherited house accrues council tax (often at a premium rate once the exemption period ends), unoccupied-property insurance at a higher premium, maintenance and security — while any further rise in value creates more taxable gain. Our guide to selling an inherited property covers the probate sequence and the practical decisions.

When selling fast is the tax-efficient move — and when it is not

I will be straight about this, because plenty of sites in this sector will not be. A genuine cash buyer pays below market value. Ready Steady Sell's own 2025 figures put the vetted range at 80–92% of market value, which means a discount of roughly 8–20% depending on the property and the buyer. That is a real cost and you should not pretend otherwise.

There are, though, specific situations where the tax arithmetic genuinely favours speed:

• You are approaching a Stamp Duty refund deadline. Losing a £16,000 English surcharge refund — or £25,600 in Scotland — dwarfs the difference between 88% and 94% of value on a modest house. This is the clearest case.
• You are holding an empty inherited property. Council tax premiums, insurance loadings and maintenance run every month, and a rising valuation adds to the gain.
• Your chain has collapsed and a purchase depends on it. The cost of losing the onward property — lost fees, a fresh search, a worse mortgage rate — is usually larger than the discount.

And situations where it clearly does not:

• You have no deadline and a saleable house. If you can wait, the open market pays more. Speed is worth paying for only when you need it.
• Your gain is already CGT-free. Selling your main home fast saves no tax at all, because there was none. The only question is price versus certainty.
• The "cash buyer" is a lead broker. No funds, no completion date, no guarantee — and your deadline arrives anyway. Check any company against our guide to the best house-buying companies and look for NAPB membership and Property Ombudsman registration before you share anything.

Ready Steady Sell's 2025 data also recorded 0% fall-through on completed vetted cash sales, against roughly 30% of open-market sales collapsing before completion. When you are counting down to a refund deadline, certainty is the product you are buying. The full methodology and figures are in our 2025 quick sale data report.

Working out what you will actually keep

The number that matters is net proceeds, and it is worth writing down properly:

1. Start with your realistic sale price — from sold comparables, not a portal estimate. Our valuation guide and free house valuation will get you there.
2. Subtract the mortgage redemption figure, including any early repayment charge — ask your lender for a formal statement, not the app balance.
3. Subtract agent commission plus VAT, and conveyancing plus disbursements.
4. Subtract Capital Gains Tax, if the property is not your main home.
5. Add back any Stamp Duty surcharge refund you become entitled to on completion. This is money coming in, and it is routinely left out of sellers' sums.

Step five is the one that changes decisions. A seller comparing a £250,000 open-market offer that might complete in five months against a £228,000 cash offer completing in four weeks is not really comparing £250,000 with £228,000. If the faster route secures a £16,000 refund that the slower route would forfeit, the gap narrows to £6,000 — before you count five months of mortgage payments, council tax and the risk of the chain breaking.

Run your own version of that sum before you decide anything. If you want offers to put against it, you can compare vetted cash offers here — free, with no obligation, and no pressure to take any of them.

A note on honesty

Everything above is general information, not tax advice. Property tax has enough edge cases — mixed-use buildings, part-disposals of garden land, trusts, non-residence, multiple dwellings relief — that a five-figure liability can turn on a detail. If your sale involves anything beyond a straightforward main home, a couple of hundred pounds with a qualified tax adviser is the cheapest money you will spend on the whole move. And if a company tells you a particular structure "avoids" tax entirely, treat that as a reason to leave, not a reason to sign.

Rates, bands and deadlines change with each fiscal event. The figures on this page reflect the 2026/27 position published by HMRC, Revenue Scotland and the Welsh Revenue Authority — check the current position before you commit.