Sell your previous home within the qualifying window after buying a new one, and England, Wales and Scotland will each hand back the extra stamp duty you paid for briefly owning two properties at once. But they don't hand back the same amount. Scotland's Additional Dwelling Supplement (ADS) runs three percentage points higher than the equivalent England and Wales surcharge — and that gap, converted into a number buyers actually feel, lands on almost exactly the same span of mortgage interest at every price point: about 11 months.
The refund gap, priced in months of mortgage interest
| Purchase price | England/Wales refund (5%) | Scotland refund (8%) | Extra cash back in Scotland | Gap in months of mortgage interest* |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £300,000 | £15,000 | £24,000 | £9,000 | 11.1 |
| £400,000 | £20,000 | £32,000 | £12,000 | 11.1 |
| £500,000 | £25,000 | £40,000 | £15,000 | 11.1 |
| £750,000 | £37,500 | £60,000 | £22,500 | 11.1 |
| £1,000,000 | £50,000 | £80,000 | £30,000 | 11.1 |
*Assumes a 75% loan-to-value mortgage at the Bank of England's quoted 5-year fixed rate of 4.32% (April 2026 print, the most recent published at the time of writing), treated as interest-only for comparison purposes. Figures verified against POST /api/sdlt/calculate for England, Wales and Scotland on 2026-09-09. Run your own numbers in the stamp duty calculator.
Why the gap doesn't move
The flat 11.1 months isn't a coincidence and it isn't policy design — it's arithmetic. Scotland's ADS is a flat 8% of price; England's and Wales's higher-rate surcharges are both a flat 5% of price (confirmed in Stamp Duty Refunds Compared: England, Wales and Scotland). That means the difference between them is always exactly 3% of the purchase price, whether the property costs £300,000 or £1 million. A 75% loan-to-value mortgage is also a fixed proportion of price. Divide one fixed proportion of price by another fixed proportion of price and the price itself cancels out of the sum — which is why the refund gap lands on the same ratio of months regardless of what the property actually cost.
What this refund actually is
All three nations charge extra stamp duty — a "higher rate" or "additional dwelling" surcharge — when a buyer completes on a new residential property while still legally owning another one. That situation is common in an ordinary moving chain: the new home completes before the old one sells, so for a period the buyer owns two properties and pays the surcharge on the new purchase as a result. HMRC in England, the Welsh Revenue Authority in Wales and Revenue Scotland in Scotland will each refund that surcharge once the previous main residence is sold, provided the sale happens inside the qualifying window each authority sets. The refund is calculated as the difference between what was paid at the surcharge rate and what would have been due without it — exactly the 5%/5%/8%-of-price figures in the table above. Deadlines and evidence requirements differ by nation; Wales vs England: the higher-rate stamp duty refund compared sets out the process side in full.
Who this applies to
This is not a buy-to-let calculation. A landlord who buys a second property and keeps both never gets the surcharge back — there's no "previous main residence" being sold. The refund exists specifically for people who, often unintentionally, end up owning two homes for a period: a chain where completion dates don't line up, a bridging purchase, or a move that outpaces a sale. The three-nation gap above is the extra cost, and later the extra refund, that this ordinary timing mismatch produces depending on which side of the Scottish border the new purchase sits.
The scale of it
Whether a buyer clears the surcharge threshold at all depends heavily on price. Of the 799,137 categoryA residential sales recorded in England and Wales in 2025, 396,697 — just under half — completed at or above £300,000, the lower end of the price ladder in the table above (Land Registry Price Paid Data, checked 2026-09-09). Below that, both the cash gap and the months-of-interest translation shrink proportionally, but the 11.1-month ratio itself holds at any price, down to the first pound of the surcharge.
What this doesn't tell you
This is a comparison of the tax mechanics only — not a reason to buy in one nation over another, and not a claim about which mortgage rate any individual buyer will actually secure (rates depend on lender, deposit and credit profile, and will differ from the Bank of England's quoted average used here). It also doesn't account for the underlying cost of the property itself: Wales vs England Stamp Duty: The Cost Gap Above £400,000 and SDLT vs LTT vs LBTT: the exact price crossovers cover how the underlying tax bill itself compares across the three nations before any refund is involved. For a different way of translating a one-off stamp duty figure into an intuitive comparison, How Many Years of Council Tax Equal Your Stamp Duty? applies the same idea to the base tax bill rather than the refund gap. More cost-intelligence pieces like this are collected on the Homecost blog, and you can check the true cost breakdown for any UK postcode — mortgage, council tax and stamp duty together — using the free tool.
Speak to a qualified adviser before acting on any of the figures above.