Five Counties Finance

Commercial stamp duty calculator

SDLT on non-residential property in England and Northern Ireland — a freehold purchase, the grant of a new lease including the net present value of the rent, or taking over an existing lease. It shows its working, and where it cannot give you a reliable figure it says so rather than guessing.

What kind of transaction is it?
Where is the property?
Scotland charges LBTT and Wales charges LTT. Both are different taxes at different rates, so this calculator will refuse rather than give you an English figure.
The price
Where the property is opted to tax at the effective date, the VAT forms part of the chargeable consideration and SDLT is charged on the VAT-inclusive figure. On a £450,000 freehold that is the difference between £12,000 and £16,500.

Fill in the boxes above and the figure appears here. Nothing is sent anywhere — the whole calculation runs in your browser.

What this calculator gets right that others get wrong

Rent for years six onwards is capped

For year six and beyond, SDLT charges the highest rent payable in any twelve consecutive months of the first five years — not the rent your lease actually specifies. On HMRC’s own published example, a ten-year lease rising from £4,000 to £11,000 is charged as though the rent were £8,000 from year six. Discounting the actual rent instead gives a net present value of £64,664.66 against the correct £57,192.25, and over-taxes every lease with rising rent.

The premium and the rent are two separate charges

They are worked out independently and then added, never combined into one figure before the bands are applied. On a fifteen-year lease at £30,000 a year with a £200,000 premium, the correct answer is £2,955. Banding the combined figure would give £16,776.

There is also an old rule under which annual rent of £1,000 or more removed the nil-rate band from the premium. It does not apply to non-residential property. Some calculators still implement it.

Taking over an existing lease is charged on the capital sum only

The rent was already taxed when the lease was granted, so there is no second charge on the net present value of what remains. The exception is where the original grant was made under a relief — group, reconstruction or acquisition, or charities relief — in which case the first non-exempt assignment is treated as a new grant and the rent is charged again. Most buyers will not know which applies. Where you do not know, this calculator refuses rather than assuming the ordinary case.

Scotland and Wales are different taxes

Scotland charges Land and Buildings Transaction Tax and Wales charges Land Transaction Tax, both at different rates. Handing you an English figure would be a wrong answer delivered confidently, so this calculator refuses.

Where the figures come from

Every rate, band and threshold used here is read from HMRC or from the Finance Act 2003 and recorded with its source and the date it was checked. The calculation was verified against HMRC’s own calculator on 23 and 25 August 2026, reproducing its published worked example row by row, including the seven-decimal discount factors it uses.

Non-residential freehold rates: nil to £150,000, 2% to £250,000, 5% above, charged on slices. Net present value of rent: nil to £150,000, 1% to £5,000,000, 2% above. Temporal discount rate 3.5%, Finance Act 2003 Schedule 5 paragraph 8. Checked 25 August 2026.

This is a calculator, not advice, and it does not cover reliefs, non-cash consideration, or linked transactions beyond aggregating net present values. For anything unusual, check with a solicitor and against HMRC’s own calculator.