How Long Does a Stamp Duty Refund Take?

The stated answer is 15 working days. HMRC’s guidance says it “will usually make the payment directly into your bank account within 15 working days of receiving your claim”. Count from when HMRC receives the claim, not when you send it, and count working days.

The honest answer is that nobody outside HMRC knows whether that happens. It is a service statement, not a measured average, and there is no published figure showing how often it is met. That is not an accusation — it is what the data does and does not cover, which is worth setting out properly, because most articles on this question quote a range of weeks without saying where the number came from.

What HMRC actually publishes about refund times

We went looking for every official source that might answer this: HMRC’s guidance, its annual report, the stamp tax statistics, the service dashboards, and the Adjudicator’s complaint data. This is what exists.

The second row is the one that matters. HMRC runs a “check when you can expect a reply” service giving live processing times across a dozen taxes and regimes. Stamp Duty Land Tax is not one of them. So for the one tax where the money in question is routinely five figures, there is no published queue length, no average, and no way for a claimant to know whether three weeks of silence is normal or a problem.

How many refunds HMRC pays — and why we can no longer tell you

Until last year HMRC published refund volumes every quarter, in its Quarterly Stamp Duty Land Tax Statistics. The last release, covering January to March 2025, reported that 6,900 refunds of the higher rates for additional dwellings were made, totalling £136 million. (HMRC Quarterly SDLT Statistics)

The average is £136 million divided by 6,900 — our arithmetic on HMRC’s two published figures, not a figure HMRC itself publishes. It is a useful sense of scale: these are not trivial sums, and they are the single largest category of SDLT refund.

That publication was discontinued on 1 April 2025. Readers were directed to the Annual Stamp Tax Statistics instead — which carries HRAD receipts and transaction counts, but not the refund figures. For context, that annual publication reports £5,435 million of HRAD receipts in 2024–25, with 211,700 transactions subject to the surcharge giving rise to £2,790 million.

What the complaints data shows

The nearest thing to an independent check on HMRC delay is the Adjudicator’s Office annual report, which investigates complaints that have exhausted HMRC’s internal process. Its remit expressly covers “unreasonable delays”.

In 2024–25 the Adjudicator received 2,216 HMRC and VOA complaints, against 2,239 the year before, and investigated 814 HMRC cases. Of those, 53 were fully upheld and 234 partially upheld. HMRC paid £55,398.39 in redress across all categories.

Read this carefully, because it is easy to over-claim from it. These figures cover all HMRC complaints, across every tax. The Adjudicator does not break them down by tax head, so none of this is evidence about SDLT specifically. What it does tell you is that when a complaint gets that far, a substantial minority are found to have merit — between a third and a half in every year of the last four. That is a reason to use the complaints process rather than assume it is pointless.

We have deliberately not included claimant testimonials or forum reports. We could not source them to anything citable, and anecdote presented as data is exactly what this page exists to avoid.

What actually causes a delay

HMRC does not publish a breakdown of delay causes, so the list below is drawn from what its guidance requires rather than from statistics. Every item is something a claim can fail on, and every one is within your control before you submit.

• A missing or wrong UTRN. The unique transaction reference number ties your claim to the return HMRC holds. Without it there is nothing to match against. It is on the SDLT5 certificate; your conveyancer will have it.
• Figures that do not reconcile. The tax you say was paid has to agree with the return filed against that UTRN.
• Bank details that do not match the claimant. HMRC asks for the account of the person who should receive the payment, and a mismatch invites a check.
• An agent claim without written authority. HMRC requires a covering letter and a signed authority from the buyer. Claims firms sometimes submit without it.
• A claim HMRC decides to check. Most are paid straight through; one selected for checking will not be.
• Post. The 15 working days run from receipt. A posted SDLT16 spends time in transit that an online submission does not.

What to do when your refund is overdue

There is a defined route, and each rung has to be climbed before the next one will look at you.

The two details worth holding on to. First, the HMRC complaints process has two internal tiers and the Adjudicator will not take a case that has not been through both. Second, once you have the tier 2 response the Adjudicator’s Office will normally only accept the complaint within 6 months of it. Miss that and you are relying on it accepting a late case in exceptional circumstances. Use the SDLT enquiries line to chase before any of this — most stalled claims are a missing reference, not a dispute.

Do not let a chase distract you from the claim deadline itself, which is separate and unforgiving: for a previous main home sold on or after 29 October 2018, HMRC must receive the claim within 12 months of the sale or 12 months of the SDLT return’s filing date, whichever is later. Chasing a late claim is not a remedy for having filed one late. The rules are set out in our guide to claiming back the second-home surcharge.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. HMRC, Refunds of Stamp Duty Land Tax — the 15 working day statement.
2. HMRC, Apply for a refund of Stamp Duty Land Tax — payment made without checking eligibility.
3. HMRC, Quarterly SDLT Statistics commentary — 6,900 refunds worth £136m, Q1 2025; publication discontinued 1 April 2025.
4. HMRC, Annual Stamp Tax Statistics — HRAD receipts and transactions, 2024–25.
5. HMRC, Check when you can expect a reply from HMRC — the list of regimes covered, which does not include SDLT.
6. The Adjudicator’s Office annual report 2025 and the 2022–2024 reports — complaint volumes and upheld rates.
7. Complain about HMRC and How to complain to the Adjudicator’s Office — the escalation route and the 6-month limit.

Last reviewed 28 August 2026. Every figure on this page is either quoted from one of the sources above or is arithmetic on them, labelled as such. Where a number does not exist, we have said so rather than estimated it. If HMRC resumes publishing refund processing data we will update this page and say what changed.