Stamp Duty or not?
Pick the right tax bill for each home. Each round is a real average price from somewhere in the UK.
Buyer
This is information, not financial advice.
About this game
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What the game is
Each game has ten rounds. A round shows a home: its price, the nation it is in and who is buying it, a first-time buyer or someone moving home. Three tax bills sit underneath, and one of them is right.
The two wrong answers are not random. One is the bill the other type of buyer would pay. The other uses the rules of a different nation. These are the mistakes people make most often when they work out the tax on a home, so each round is a small lesson in how the rules differ.
Three taxes, not one
Stamp Duty Land Tax applies in England and Northern Ireland. Scotland has Land and Buildings Transaction Tax, known as LBTT, and Wales has Land Transaction Tax, known as LTT. Each has its own bands, its own rates and its own rules for first-time buyers, so the same price can give three different bills.
All three work like income tax. Each rate applies only to the part of the price that falls in its band, not to the whole price. That is why the bill jumps less than you might expect when a price crosses into a higher band.
Where the prices come from
The prices are council area averages from the UK House Price Index, published by HM Land Registry with the Office for National Statistics, Registers of Scotland and Land & Property Services in Northern Ireland. The game rounds each one to the nearest £5,000. The box under the game names the month the figures refer to.
Every tax bill comes from the same sums as our Stamp Duty calculator, LBTT calculator and LTT calculator. Use them to try your own price. If you are saving for a home, the house deposit calculator adds the tax to your target.
How to play
- Read the price, the nation and the type of buyer.
- Tap the tax bill you think is right.
- Read the answer and the reason, then press "Next".
- After ten rounds, copy your score to share it. The copied text holds only the game name and your score.
The game stores nothing on your device, so each visit starts fresh.