A first-time buyer and a home mover paying the same price for the same house can face three very different tax gaps depending which side of the Scotland–England or England–Wales border they're on. In England, the saving between a first-time buyer and a mover tops out at a flat £5,000 — but only inside a specific price band, and it disappears completely above £500,000. In Scotland, the saving is far smaller, a flat £600, but it never disappears, however expensive the home. In Wales, there is no saving at all, at any price. We ran the same price ladder — £150,000 to £1,000,000 — through all three nations' live calculators to map exactly where each gap opens, flattens and closes, then set those prices against the household income it actually takes to reach them.
Three different shapes, one price ladder
Running a first-time buyer and a standard mover through each nation's stamp duty calculator at the same price points shows the saving isn't a single number — it's a shape, and the three nations drew three different ones.
| Purchase price | England: FTB saving vs mover | Wales: FTB saving vs mover | Scotland: FTB saving vs mover |
|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | £500 | £0 | £100 |
| £175,000 | £1,000 | £0 | £600 |
| £200,000 | £1,500 | £0 | £600 |
| £250,000 | £2,500 | £0 | £600 |
| £300,000 | £5,000 | £0 | £600 |
| £350,000 | £5,000 | £0 | £600 |
| £400,000 | £5,000 | £0 | £600 |
| £500,000 | £5,000 | £0 | £600 |
| £600,000 | £0 | £0 | £600 |
| £750,000 | £0 | £0 | £600 |
| £1,000,000 | £0 | £0 | £600 |
Figures calculated against the live 2026 rate tables for Stamp Duty Land Tax (England), Land Transaction Tax (Wales) and Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Scotland), 15 October 2026 (HMRC; Welsh Revenue Authority; Revenue Scotland).
England: a saving that rises, flattens, then vanishes
England's first-time buyer relief gives no stamp duty on the first £300,000 of a main residence, then 5% on the slice between £300,001 and £500,000. A mover pays the standard schedule from £0, with no equivalent nil-rate band above £125,000. Because both schedules apply the same 5% marginal rate between £300,000 and £500,000, the gap between them holds dead flat at £5,000 across the whole band — we set out the mechanics of that plateau in what income you need to reach the £300k–£500k FTB relief band. Below £300,000 the saving tapers down to nothing as both schedules converge toward the lower nil-rate thresholds. Above £500,000 the relief is withdrawn in full — a first-time buyer pays exactly what a mover pays, with no partial benefit at all.
Of 772,831 England cat-A sales in 2025, 49.0% fell under £300,000 (where the saving is rising but below its £5,000 ceiling), 32.0% sat inside the flat £5,000 band, and 19.0% cleared £500,000, where the relief contributes nothing (HM Land Registry Price Paid data, fetched 15 October 2026).
Wales: no distinction between a first-time buyer and a mover, ever
Wales replaced Stamp Duty with Land Transaction Tax in 2018 and chose not to carry any first-time buyer relief across. Running the same price ladder through the Welsh Revenue Authority's schedule returns an identical bill for a first-time buyer and a mover at every single price point — £0 under £225,000, rising together through the same bands all the way to £1,000,000. There is no income level, and no price point, at which being a first-time buyer changes a Welsh buyer's tax bill. We cover the mechanics and the resulting cash gap against England in the Welsh LTT income ladder.
Of 41,614 Wales cat-A sales in 2025, 52.2% fell under the £225,000 nil-rate threshold that applies equally to first-time buyers and movers alike (HM Land Registry Price Paid data, fetched 15 October 2026).
Scotland: the smallest saving, but the only one with no ceiling
Scotland's Additional Dwelling Supplement aside, its ordinary first-time buyer relief works differently again: it raises the nil-rate band from £145,000 to £175,000, worth a maximum of 2% of that £30,000 slice — exactly £600. Unlike England's relief, Scotland's never phases out. A first-time buyer buying a £1,000,000 home in Scotland still saves the full £600 against a mover at the same price, because both schedules move in lockstep above £176,000 and the £600 head start carries through unchanged. (Scotland's calculator has a known display quirk for first-time buyer figures above £176,000, so the Scotland column above is calculated directly from the published rate schedule — standard tax minus the flat £600 relief — rather than taken from the raw calculator output; we verify this methodology in the Scotland LBTT income ladder.)
HM Land Registry Price Paid data doesn't cover Scotland, so sales-share figures aren't available for the Scottish market in the way they are for England and Wales above — but the tax mechanics themselves are drawn directly from Revenue Scotland's published rate tables (Revenue Scotland, Additional Dwelling Supplement).
What income it actually takes to reach each point on the ladder
Most UK lenders size a mortgage at around 4.5 times household income — a convention that echoes the Bank of England's loan-to-income guidance rather than a rule any individual lender must follow (Bank of England, Financial Stability). Combined with a deposit, that gives income = price × (1 − deposit %) ÷ 4.5, the same formula used throughout our income-ladder series:
| Price point | Income needed (10% deposit) | Income needed (25% deposit) | England saving | Scotland saving |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | £30,000 | £25,000 | £500 | £100 |
| £175,000 | £35,000 | £29,167 | £1,000 | £600 |
| £225,000 | £45,000 | £37,500 | £2,000 | £600 |
| £300,000 | £60,000 | £50,000 | £5,000 | £600 |
| £400,000 | £80,000 | £66,667 | £5,000 | £600 |
| £500,000 | £100,000 | £83,333 | £5,000 | £600 |
| £750,000 | £150,000 | £125,000 | £0 | £600 |
| £1,000,000 | £200,000 | £166,667 | £0 | £600 |
Reading the two together gives the real comparison: Scotland's full £600 saving is locked in by the time a household reaches roughly £35,000 of income on a 10% deposit — a far lower bar than the £60,000-to-£100,000 income range England's much larger £5,000 saving actually requires. And at the top of the ladder, a first-time buyer with £150,000 or more of household income gets no stamp duty advantage at all in England, exactly as in Wales — the one English price band it was designed to help has already been left behind.
The same comparison, extended
This ladder covers first-time buyer relief specifically. The additional-property surcharge that second-home buyers and landlords face across the same three nations follows an entirely different shape — flat-rate from the first pound, with no equivalent cliff or cap — set out in the second home and buy-to-let surcharge compared across England, Wales and Scotland, and the exact price at which each nation's standard-rate schedule crosses another's is mapped in the SDLT-vs-LBTT-vs-LTT crossover thresholds.
This is general information on how each nation's relief is structured, not advice on which price, region or mortgage size suits any individual buyer. Thresholds, rates and lending conventions change — speak to a qualified mortgage adviser or conveyancer before acting on any figure here. You can check the full cost breakdown for a specific property with the Homecost true cost tool, or browse more Cost Intelligence guides.