Land and Buildings Transaction Tax Will Return from 1st April - Scotland will not follow England to extend the relief

4th March 2021

Property Tax or Stamp duty payable on buying a house in England has once again been given and extension to reliefs in the budget.

The Scottish Government is under pressure to extend a relief on property sale taxes after Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced that the equivalent scheme in England would run until the end of June.

In Scotland the tax on house sale is called Land and Buildings Transaction Tax. The tax was suspended last year but Kate Forbes stated on radio today that she was not proposing to extend the suspension and the tax will once again be levied on house sales.

For the most part, you only pay tax on a house sale if you are the buyer, and this will take the form of the LBTT. It replaced the Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) in 2015 as the new form of property tax in Scotland.

Rates from 15 July 2020 to 31 March 2021

For transactions where the effective date is between 15 July 2020 and 31 March 2021 (inclusive of these dates), the temporary increase in the nil rate band to £250,000 introduced in July 2020 will apply. In general terms, the effective date is usually the moving in date or the date when keys to a property are obtained.

Rates and bands for these transactions are as follows:



Purchase price---------LBTT rate

Up to £250,000 -------- 0%

£250,001 to £325,000--5%

£325,001 to £750,000--10%

Over £750,000-----------12%

Rates from 1 April 2021

The Scottish Budget 2021-2022 confirmed that the ceiling of the nil rate band for residential LBTT will return, as planned, to £145,000 for transactions with an effective date after 31 March 2021.

Rates and bands as of 1 April 2021 will therefore be as follows:

Purchase price----LBTT rate

Up to £145,000---0%

£145,001 to £250,000--2%

£250,001 to £325,000--5%

£325,001 to £750,000--10%

Over £750,000--12%