1. Introduction
HM Revenue & Customs collected £13.9 billion in Stamp Duty Land Tax in the 2024–25 financial year.1 A portion of that sum was paid in error — by buyers who were entitled to a lower charge, a relief, or a refund, and did not know it. If you want to self-screen before deciding how to proceed, you can check your eligibility across all four refund routes in about 90 seconds.
Stamp Duty Land Tax is the tax due on most property purchases in England and Northern Ireland. It is self-assessed: the buyer, through their conveyancer, calculates the figure, files a return, and pays. The return is filed within fourteen days of completion, and in the ordinary course it is never looked at again.
That is the structural reason overpayments persist. A conveyancer is engaged to complete a purchase, not to audit the tax treatment of it months later. The standard calculation applies the headline purchase price to the standard residential rates; it does not, by default, test whether part of the price was paid for chattels, whether the building was suitable for use as a dwelling, or whether a surcharge will later become repayable. Nothing in the transaction prompts a second look, and the buyer is rarely told that a second look is even possible.
The law, however, allows one. A buyer has four years from completion to correct an overpaid return through overpayment relief, and a shorter, separate route to amend it. Both are described in section 5. Most buyers use neither.
StampDutyBack is an independent research and screening operation. It is not a claims firm. It does not file claims, hold client money, or act as a tax adviser. It does one thing: it examines a property purchase against HMRC’s own published guidance and the relevant case law, and reports whether a refund position exists. Where one does, and the buyer wants to act on it, the case is routed to a regulated specialist firm. Where one does not, the buyer is told so.
This document sets out how that examination works. It exists for a specific reader: the person who has been told they may have overpaid, is reasonably sceptical of anyone who stands to gain from saying so, and wants to check the claim against primary sources before going further.
Every category, test, and deadline described below is traceable to a numbered source — an HMRC manual page, a provision of the Finance Act 2003, or a tribunal judgment. The sources are listed in full at the end, each with a direct link. Readers are encouraged to follow them; every claim in this document can be checked against a public source.
The document is organised in seven parts: the four categories of overpaid SDLT that the screening covers; the screening method itself; the policy on routing cases to specialist firms; the statutory time limits that govern every claim; the threshold used to distinguish a do-it-yourself claim from one that warrants a specialist; and a closing statement of what the operation does not do.
2. The four overpayment categories
Overpaid SDLT is not random. In the large majority of cases it falls into one of four categories, each defined by a specific body of HMRC guidance and, in three of the four, by decided case law. The screening covers these four categories and nothing beyond them; it is not designed to return a positive result in every case. Each category is set out below under the same five points: what it is, the legal basis, when it applies, the typical refund, and the points most commonly misunderstood.
2.1 Chattels overpayment
Stamp Duty Land Tax is charged on the purchase of land and the buildings on it. It is not charged on chattels — the moveable items that may change hands with a property but are not part of it, such as free-standing furniture, carpets (fitted or otherwise), curtains, and white goods that are not integrated. Where a buyer pays a single price covering both the property and chattels, only the property element is properly taxable.
The governing rule is the requirement, under Schedule 4 to the Finance Act 2003, for a “just and reasonable apportionment” of the consideration where a single sum is paid partly for land and partly for something that is not land. HMRC’s guidance at SDLTM04010 sets out how the line is drawn.2 An item chargeable to SDLT must be a fixture — attached to, and forming part of, the property — whereas a chattel is not chargeable. The manual states that the distinction turns on “the degree and purpose of the attachment”.
Two questions decide it. The first is the degree of annexation: how firmly, and by what means, the item is attached. The second, which HMRC treats as decisive in most cases, is the purpose of annexation: whether the item was fixed in place to be enjoyed as an object in its own right, or to make a lasting improvement to the property itself. A picture hung on a wall is attached, but attached only so it can be seen; it remains a chattel. A fitted kitchen is attached in order to become part of the house, and is a fixture.
The most-cited tribunal decision on the point, at First-tier Tribunal level, is Orsman v HMRC (see our case-law summary of Orsman).3 The buyer there apportioned £8,000 of the price to chattels. The First-tier Tribunal accepted that much of the list was genuine, but found that some items — fitted units attached to a worktop that was itself fixed to the wall — were fixtures, part of the land, and chargeable. The apportionment was adjusted upward and the appeal failed. Orsman is authority for a cautious principle, not a generous one: an apportionment must reflect what the items genuinely are, not what produces the lowest tax, and a tribunal will reclassify items that have been described optimistically.
A chattels position arises where a buyer paid SDLT on the full purchase price, the sale genuinely included moveable items, and either no apportionment was made or an inadequate one was. The completion statement and the contract are the first documents to check; many record a single figure with no chattels line at all. The position is strongest where the property was sold furnished and the sale particulars or correspondence record what was included. A claim runs against the four-year overpayment relief deadline described in section 5.
Typical refunds in this category are modest — in the region of £400 to £1,500.4 The figure is a function of the second-hand value of the items, not their replacement cost, and for most homes the moveable contents are not worth a great deal once that distinction is applied. The category matters less for the size of any single refund than for how often it is present.
Three points are commonly misunderstood. First, the relevant value is the open-market second-hand value of the items at the date of completion: a worn carpet is worth what a worn carpet fetches, not what a new one costs, and HMRC expects the figure to reflect age and condition. Second, fitted kitchen units, integrated appliances, boilers, and bathroom suites are generally fixtures, not chattels, and cannot be apportioned away however the parties would prefer to treat them. Third, a chattels claim needs a genuine itemised inventory, with a value attributed to each item; a round-sum deduction supported by no schedule is the pattern HMRC most readily challenges, and Orsman shows the tribunal will follow.
2.2 Second home surcharge refund
A buyer who purchases an additional residential property — a second home, a buy-to-let, or simply a next home bought before the current one is sold — pays a surcharge on top of the standard SDLT rates. This is the Higher Rates for Additional Dwellings charge, usually shortened to HRAD. It applies where, at the end of the day of completion, the buyer owns more than one dwelling and is not, in that same transaction, replacing a main residence.
HRAD is imposed by Schedule 4ZA to the Finance Act 2003.5 Paragraph 1 of that Schedule substitutes a “Table A” of higher rates: an additional 5 percentage points are added to each band of the standard residential rates — and 3 percentage points for purchases between 1 April 2016 and 30 October 2024, before the higher figure took effect on 31 October 2024. Across the full purchase price the surcharge is therefore broadly equivalent to 5% of the whole consideration, though the statute does not impose it as a single flat percentage.
A buyer who is moving home, but completes on the new property before selling the old one, owns two dwellings on completion day and so pays the surcharge — even though the purchase is, in substance, the replacement of a main residence. Paragraph 3 of Schedule 4ZA sets the substantive conditions for treating the purchase as a replacement; paragraph 8(3) provides the procedural refund mechanism — a right to amend the land transaction return — and the 12-month claim window. If the previous main residence is sold within the permitted period, the transaction is treated as the replacement it always was, and the surcharge becomes repayable. HMRC’s guidance at SDLTM09812 explains how the “main residence” is identified: the test for the old dwelling is one of objective fact — was it at some point the buyer’s only or main residence — while the test for the new dwelling is one of intention.6
The refund applies where three things are true: the buyer paid the 3% or 5% surcharge; the property bought was, or was intended to be, the buyer’s only or main residence; and the buyer’s previous main residence is sold within three years of the new purchase. The three-year window can be extended where HMRC accepts that exceptional circumstances, which could not reasonably have been foreseen, prevented a sale in time, and the property was then sold as soon as was practical. The scope of that discretion is explained at SDLTM09807.7 An application for the extension must itself be made within twelve months of the sale of the previous main residence, under paragraph 3(7B) of Schedule 4ZA.
The refund must then be claimed within a strict period: the later of twelve months from the sale of the previous home and twelve months from the filing date of the SDLT return on the new purchase.8 The two periods do different work and are easily confused. The three-year window governs when the old home must be sold; the twelve-month period governs when the claim must reach HMRC. Section 5 returns to the point.
This is the largest category by value. Because the surcharge adds several percentage points across the whole of the consideration, refunds commonly run from £6,000 to upwards of £20,000, and on higher-value purchases well beyond that.4 It is also the most frequently missed. A buyer who sells the old home a year after moving has done exactly what the replacement rule contemplates, and is owed the surcharge back — but no one in the transaction is tasked with telling them, and the refund is not issued automatically.
Two errors are common. The first is the belief that the surcharge, once paid, is final. It is not, provided the previous residence is sold inside the three-year window and the claim is made on time. The second is treating the three-year window and the twelve-month claim period as a single deadline. They are separate, they run from different events, and missing either ends the claim independently of the other.
2.3 Non-residential reclassification
SDLT is charged on two different rate scales. Residential rates apply to dwellings; non-residential rates apply to commercial property, bare land, and “mixed” property that is part residential and part not. The two scales diverge sharply: the non-residential scale is materially lower at most price points, and it does not carry the HRAD surcharge at all. A purchase taxed at residential rates that should have been taxed at non-residential, or mixed, rates produces an overpayment — and because the difference is structural rather than marginal, the overpayment can be large.
Whether a property is “residential” turns on section 116 of the Finance Act 2003: in essence, a building used or suitable for use as a dwelling, together with land that is its garden or grounds. HMRC’s guidance on the residential definition is at SDLTM00410.9 The two words that generate most of the disputes are “suitable” and “grounds”, and both have been considered by the Court of Appeal.
On “suitable”, the leading authority is the Court of Appeal’s decision in Mudan v HMRC, handed down in June 2025.10 The Mudans bought a house in severe disrepair — vandalised, and needing substantial renovation before the family could live in it — and argued that it was not, at the date of purchase, suitable for use as a dwelling. The Court of Appeal disagreed. It held that whether a building is “suitable for use as a dwelling” depends on the fundamental characteristics and nature of the building, not on whether it happened to be habitable on the day of completion. A building that retains those characteristics, and needs repair or renovation rather than reconstruction, remains residential. For a methodology reviewed in 2026, Mudan is the authority a reader should expect to see cited first: it is a Court of Appeal decision, binding on the tribunals, and it sets the test deliberately high.
The earlier decision most often cited alongside it is P N Bewley Ltd v HMRC, a First-tier Tribunal decision from 2019.11 Bewley concerned a derelict bungalow with asbestos that prevented safe repair, removed central heating and pipework, and planning permission already granted for its demolition. The tribunal held it was not suitable for use as a dwelling. Read together with Mudan, Bewley marks one end of the spectrum: a building stripped and destined for demolition is not a dwelling, while a building that is merely dilapidated and in need of renovation still is. The question set by section 116 is whether the building was used or suitable for use as a dwelling at the effective date — a question of the building’s fundamental characteristics, not of minor disrepair.
A third decision rounds out the picture. In Fish Homes Ltd v HMRC (see our Fish Homes case note), a First-tier Tribunal decision from 2020, a flat in a block with dangerous Grenfell-type cladding was held to be a dwelling notwithstanding the cladding.12 Fish Homes confirmed that defects falling short of fundamental unsuitability — including significant cladding deficiencies — do not defeat residential classification. Taken with Mudan and Bewley, the case law sets a demanding threshold: only a building that has genuinely lost the fundamental characteristics of a dwelling falls outside residential rates.
The second word, “grounds”, was considered by the Court of Appeal in Hyman & Goodfellow v HMRC.13 The taxpayers argued that land beyond what was needed for the reasonable enjoyment of their houses — large gardens and paddocks — should not count as residential. The Court of Appeal rejected that argument: section 116 contains no implied “reasonable enjoyment” test and no acreage limit on what can be garden or grounds. The court did not, however, attempt to define “grounds” comprehensively, and acknowledged that the boundary is fact-sensitive and will, in some cases, leave room for reasonable disagreement. Hyman & Goodfellow therefore constrains one specific argument — that size alone makes land non-residential — without settling every question about gardens, paddocks, and outbuildings.
A non-residential or mixed-use position is realistic in two situations. The first is documented uninhabitability at completion, on facts of the Bewley kind rather than ordinary disrepair. The second is a genuine and more-than-incidental non-residential element — commercial premises sold together with a flat above, or land subject to a third party’s grazing or agricultural lease, for example — that gives the transaction a real non-residential character. A reclassification claim runs against the four-year deadline in section 5.
Where it applies, the saving is large — commonly thousands, and on higher-value purchases tens of thousands.4 The size of the prize is precisely why this category attracts the most speculative claims, and why the screening here is the most conservative of the four. A claim that rests on a worn interior, or on the size of a garden alone, is not a claim StampDutyBack will put forward — the case law described above constrains both arguments.
2.4 Multiple Dwellings Relief
Multiple Dwellings Relief, or MDR, reduced the SDLT due where a single transaction, or a set of linked transactions, included more than one dwelling — a house bought with a self-contained annexe, or several flats bought together. Rather than charging tax on the combined price, the relief worked the rate scale by reference to the average price per dwelling, and then multiplied the result by the number of dwellings. Because SDLT is progressive, averaging the price downward moved more of the consideration into the lower rate bands, and the tax fell. The averaging was subject to a floor: paragraph 5(2) of Schedule 6B provided that the tax attributable to the dwellings could not be less than 1% of the consideration attributable to them, which limited the relief on transactions with very low average values.14
MDR was set out in Schedule 6B to the Finance Act 2003, and it was abolished by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024. The default rule is that MDR is not available for any transaction with an effective date on or after 1 June 2024. There is, however, a transitional carve-out, and it matters. HMRC’s guidance at SDLTM29902 confirms that MDR remains available where the contract for the transaction was entered into on or before 6 March 2024 — the date of the Spring Budget — regardless of when completion takes place, provided the contract is not afterwards varied, assigned, or sub-sold, and the transaction is not otherwise excluded.15
The leading authority on what counted as a separate dwelling is Fiander & Brower v HMRC, an Upper Tribunal decision.16 The tribunal applied a multi-factorial test: whether each part of the property is suitable for use as a single dwelling is judged objectively, on the physical features of the property as they stood at the effective date of the transaction, weighing matters such as kitchen and bathroom facilities, access arrangements, and the degree of privacy and security — without treating any single factor as decisive. Crucially, the test cannot be satisfied by pointing to alterations that could be made in future; the tribunal rejected the argument that the ability to install a dividing door was relevant. The annexe in that case failed the test.
The practical consequence is that completion date alone does not determine whether MDR is still available. A purchase that completed on or after 1 June 2024 can still qualify if its contract was exchanged on or before 6 March 2024. A purchase that completed before 1 June 2024 qualifies on the ordinary rule. Either way, a live MDR position can still be reviewed while the four-year overpayment relief window described in section 5 remains open. Establishing whether a claim is possible therefore means collecting the completion date, the contract exchange date, and whether the contract was later varied or assigned — not the completion date by itself.
Refunds in this category are typically in the thousands; the precise figure depends on the number of dwellings and the spread of value between them.4 Two points are misunderstood. The first is that MDR vanished completely on 1 June 2024 — it did not, both because of the 6 March 2024 contractual carve-out and because pre-abolition transactions remain reviewable within the four-year window. The second is that any annexe qualifies. Fiander & Brower shows that a second dwelling must be genuinely self-sufficient, judged on the property as it physically was on the day of completion; an annexe that shares access with the main house, or lacks independent facilities, will generally not count.
3. Our screening methodology
The screening process has one purpose: to establish, before a buyer commits any time or money, whether a defensible refund position exists in any of the four categories. It is built into the refund estimator on this site, and it follows a fixed sequence rather than a judgement made afresh each time.
The estimator first collects the facts that determine which categories are even in scope: the purchase price, the completion date, whether the purchase was an additional property, the buyer’s circumstances, and whether the completion statement recorded any apportionment to chattels. Each fact opens or closes categories. The completion date does the most work of any single input: it fixes the four-year overpayment relief deadline, it determines whether the 3% or the 5% HRAD rate applied, and — together with the contract exchange date — whether an MDR claim is possible at all.
From there the screening applies a decision tree, category by category, and what it looks for is specific rather than general.
A purchase screens positively for the surcharge category where the completion statement shows the higher rate was paid, the property is or was intended to be the buyer’s main residence, and a previous main residence has been or will be sold inside the three-year window. It screens positively for chattels where the price was paid as a single sum, the property was sold furnished or part-furnished, and the completion statement shows no apportionment. It screens positively for non-residential reclassification only on Bewley-type facts — documented uninhabitability at completion, or a genuine and more-than-incidental non-residential element. It screens positively for MDR only where the transaction falls within the relief’s window — completion before 1 June 2024, or a contract exchanged on or before 6 March 2024 — and the property contained a genuinely self-contained second dwelling on the Fiander & Brower test.
The screening looks just as deliberately for the facts that close a category down. A completion date more than four years past closes every category that depends on overpayment relief, regardless of the merits. The absence of documents — no completion statement, no contract, no SDLT return — means a position cannot be evidenced, and an unevidenced position is not a claim. A single-dwelling purchase, bought unfurnished, with the standard rate correctly paid and no non-residential element, is a purchase with nothing to review, and the screening records that result rather than searching for a reason to continue.
What the estimator produces is a screen, not a verdict. It works from the facts the buyer supplies, and those facts have not yet been checked against documents. A positive screen is followed, if the buyer proceeds, by a documentary review — of the completion statement, the contract, the SDLT return, and any sale particulars — carried out before a claim is made or a case is routed. The screen identifies a position worth investigating; the review establishes whether that position survives contact with the paperwork. The two stages are distinct, and the screen is never presented as the second.
Some cases sit between a clear positive and a clear negative. A property bought in poor condition, but not on Bewley facts; a garden large enough to invite a mixed-use argument that Hyman & Goodfellow has already constrained; an annexe that is close to, but short of, the Fiander & Brower standard. The screening treats these as what they are — weak positions — and reports them as weak. It does not round them up. The case law summarised in sections 2.3 and 2.4 is restrictive, and a screen that ignored it would simply transfer the disappointment to a later stage, after the buyer had spent time and possibly money.
For the categories where it can, the estimator produces a range rather than a single figure, because the inputs are provisional and the final amount depends on documents and, in some cases, on a valuation. The range is a prompt to investigate. It is not a promise of an amount, and it is not described as one.
If the screening returns no positive category, it says so plainly. StampDutyBack does not generate optimistic estimates, and it does not treat a negative result as a problem to be worked around. A buyer who has not overpaid is given that answer, because it is the true one, and because it is the answer the buyer came for.
4. Specialist routing: our panel policy
Where a screening identifies a positive position and the buyer chooses to act on it, the case is referred to a specialist firm. StampDutyBack does not name those firms on the site, and the reason is deliberate rather than evasive.
A refund claim is not generic work. A surcharge refund turns on conveyancing dates and evidence of residence. A non-residential reclassification turns on valuation and survey evidence, and may need a chartered surveyor. An MDR claim turns on the physical configuration of a building and how it is recorded. The firm best placed to handle one of these is not always the firm best placed to handle another, and the right choice also depends on the amount at stake — a £600 position and a £40,000 position do not call for the same resource. Publishing a single named partner would route every reader to the same place regardless of fit.
Routing each case to the firm suited to its category and value produces a better outcome than a fixed relationship does. It also keeps the buyer’s options open: the buyer is not locked into a relationship that was chosen before their case was understood.
Every firm on the panel is regulated by a recognised professional body: the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT), the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), or the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). Membership of each of these carries, at a minimum, a qualification requirement, a binding code of professional conduct, a continuing professional development obligation, and a complaints and disciplinary process that a dissatisfied client can invoke. The tax and accountancy bodies among them also adopt Professional Conduct in Relation to Taxation, the cross-body standard that governs how tax work is to be carried out. Firms regulated by the SRA additionally carry compulsory professional indemnity insurance.
Regulation is the floor, not the whole of the test. A firm is admitted to the panel on the basis of its regulatory standing and its record in the specific category of work it will be sent. A firm that loses its regulated status, or that StampDutyBack ceases to be satisfied with, is removed.
Panel firms generally work on a no-win, no-fee basis for refund work: the firm’s fee is a percentage of the refund recovered, and where no refund is recovered, no fee is due. The percentage and the terms are set by the firm, disclosed to the buyer before any engagement is signed, and agreed directly between the buyer and the firm.
How StampDutyBack makes money
We earn revenue in two ways. First, the DIY Claim Pack — a £19.99 downloadable document for buyers who file their own claim. Second, referral fees — when we route a case to a panel firm and the claim succeeds, that firm pays us a fee out of their no-win-no-fee recovery. You never pay the referral fee directly; it comes out of the specialist firm’s share, not yours.
We do not charge for the screening, we do not charge for routing, and we do not accept payment from firms in exchange for being placed on the panel. Panel admission is based on regulatory standing and track record in the specific category of work.
Panel firms operate with different commercial terms. Some accept cases of any size; others apply minimum purchase-price thresholds. Routing reflects these thresholds and each firm’s areas of specialism. We do not run a competitive bidding process between firms — arrangements are negotiated per firm.
5. Time limits
Every SDLT refund route runs against a deadline, and the deadlines are not discretionary. Two routes matter, and they run in sequence rather than as a free choice between them. Both sit in Schedule 10 to the Finance Act 2003.
The first route applies in the months immediately after the purchase. A buyer — in practice their conveyancer — may amend the SDLT return within twelve months of the filing date, which is normally fourteen days after completion. An amendment adjusts the original return directly, and while it is available it is the cleanest correction. But the window is short: for most buyers, who discover an overpayment well after that first year, the amendment route has already closed.
Once the amendment window has closed, the route is overpayment relief, under paragraph 34 of Schedule 10. This is the route most refund claims rely on, and it has both a time limit and a set of substantive conditions. The time limit is in paragraph 34B:
“A claim under paragraph 34 may not be made more than 4 years after the effective date of the transaction.”
Finance Act 2003, Schedule 10, paragraph 34B(1).
The four-year period runs from the “effective date of the transaction”. In almost every purchase the effective date is the date of completion, and the rest of this document uses “completion” as the working term; but the statute fixes the deadline to the effective date, and in the small number of cases where the two differ — for example where a contract is substantially performed before completion — it is the effective date that counts.17 Four years after that date, the right to reclaim overpaid SDLT through overpayment relief ends, with no general discretion in HMRC or the tribunals to extend it.
The four-year period is the time limit. The substantive gates are in the preceding paragraph. Paragraph 34A of Schedule 10 lists a series of lettered Cases in which HMRC is “not liable to give effect to a claim under paragraph 34”. Three of them matter most to an SDLT refund. Case A applies where the overpayment arose from a mistake in a claim, election, or notice — or in failing to make one — rather than from a mistake in the return itself. Cases C and E apply where the claimant could have corrected the position by another route, such as an appeal, but allowed that route’s deadline to pass when they knew, or ought reasonably to have known, that it was available. Case G applies where the amount was calculated in accordance with the practice generally prevailing at the time it was paid. Para 34A also contains Cases B, D and F — covering matters already determined by a court or tribunal, grounds previously put to HMRC, and tax collected through enforcement or settled by contract — but these rarely arise in SDLT-refund practice. The practical effect is that overpayment relief is not a way to reopen a settled tax treatment, or to recover ground lost by missing an earlier deadline; a refund position has to be a genuine overpayment that the buyer has not already had a fair opportunity to correct. The screening accounts for this: a position that runs into one of the paragraph 34A Cases is not a position StampDutyBack will treat as a claim.
This is why the screening treats the completion date as the first fact it collects: it determines whether any claim is still alive. A purchase that completed more than four years ago cannot be reclaimed through overpayment relief, however clear or large the overpayment. The surcharge category, as section 2.2 explained, has its own separate deadline — the twelve-month refund claim window — which can fall earlier still. Statutory deadlines of this kind are strict, and missing one is fatal to the claim; StampDutyBack asks for the exact completion date at the outset so that an estimate is never built on a claim the law no longer permits anyone to make.
6. Which route is right for you: specialist or DIY
For most buyers we help, a no-win-no-fee specialist partner is the right route. Our panel firms handle the entire claim end-to-end: gathering evidence, preparing the overpayment relief submission, and managing HMRC correspondence. Crucially, they only charge a fee if the claim succeeds — so the cost risk is zero. For the great majority of refund situations, this is the lower-effort and lower-risk path.
The DIY Claim Pack is a secondary option for buyers who actively prefer to handle their own claim. That preference might be driven by confidence with HMRC paperwork, wanting to keep 100% of any refund without paying a percentage to a third party, or simply wanting full control over the process. The pack costs £19.99 and contains templates, evidence guidance, and step-by-step instructions to lodge an overpayment relief claim under Schedule 10 FA 2003.
There is no minimum claim size on the specialist route. Our panel firms are happy to take claims of any size where the legal basis is sound. The choice between routes is about preference and case complexity, not refund value.
Some situations are not suitable for the DIY route regardless of preference: uninhabitable property claims, mixed-use or commercial elements, multiple dwellings relief, and any case where the legal analysis is contested or evidentially complex. For these, the specialist route is the right call.
7. What we don’t do
This document has described what StampDutyBack does. It closes with a direct statement of what it does not do.
StampDutyBack does not provide tax advice. It is not regulated as a tax adviser, and nothing on this site is advice on an individual’s tax position. It publishes methodology and screens purchases against published sources; advice on a specific case is the work of the regulated specialist the case is routed to, under that firm’s own engagement and responsibility.
StampDutyBack does not sell leads to the highest bidder. Cases are routed editorially, to the firm best suited to the category and value of the work, and they are never auctioned.
StampDutyBack does not sell, share, or repackage user data beyond the single panel firm a specific case is routed to. The information a buyer provides is used to screen that buyer’s purchase and, with the buyer’s agreement, to refer that buyer’s case. It is not a product, and it is not passed to anyone else.
StampDutyBack does not charge an upfront fee for refund work. The DIY Claim Pack is a £19.99 downloadable document; it is not a charge for handling a claim. No fee is taken for the screening itself.
StampDutyBack does not guarantee outcomes. A screening describes a position; whether HMRC accepts a claim is a matter for HMRC, and the case law in sections 2.3 and 2.4 shows that claims do fail. Any estimate is a range and a prompt, not an assurance.
StampDutyBack does not recommend a firm it has not vetted against the panel criteria in section 4. A firm that is not regulated by one of the named bodies is not on the panel, and a case is not routed to it.
Sources
- 1.HMRC, UK Stamp Tax Statistics 2024 to 2025 (Annual Stamp Tax Statistics). https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-stamp-tax-statistics
- 2.HMRC, Stamp Duty Land Tax Manual, SDLTM04010 — Scope: how much is chargeable: fixtures and fittings. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/stamp-duty-land-tax-manual/sdltm04010
- 3.Orsman v HMRC [2012] UKFTT 227 (TC), First-tier Tribunal. https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKFTT/TC/2012/TC01921.html
- 4.Refund ranges stated in this document are indicative, drawn from observed claim values for each category. They are representative rather than guaranteed; the figure in any individual case depends on the purchase price and the specific facts of the transaction.
- 5.Finance Act 2003, Schedule 4ZA — Higher Rates for Additional Dwellings (paragraph 1, Table A; paragraph 3 conditions; paragraphs 3(7B) and 8(3), refund mechanism). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/14/schedule/4ZA
- 6.HMRC, Stamp Duty Land Tax Manual, SDLTM09812 — higher rates: meaning of “main residence”. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/stamp-duty-land-tax-manual/sdltm09812
- 7.HMRC, Stamp Duty Land Tax Manual, SDLTM09807 — higher rates: Condition D, exceptional circumstances. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/stamp-duty-land-tax-manual/sdltm09807
- 8.HMRC, Apply for a refund of the higher rates of Stamp Duty Land Tax (guidance). https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-a-refund-of-the-higher-rates-of-stamp-duty-land-tax
- 9.HMRC, Stamp Duty Land Tax Manual, SDLTM00410 — residential property and section 116 Finance Act 2003. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/stamp-duty-land-tax-manual/sdltm00410
- 10.Mudan v HMRC [2025] EWCA Civ 799, Court of Appeal. https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/civ/2025/799
- 11.P N Bewley Ltd v HMRC [2019] UKFTT 65 (TC), First-tier Tribunal. https://financeandtax.decisions.tribunals.gov.uk/judgmentfiles/j10915/TC06951.pdf
- 12.Fish Homes Ltd v HMRC [2020] UKFTT 180 (TC), First-tier Tribunal. https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKFTT/TC/2020/TC07666.html
- 13.David Hyman & Anor. v The Commissioners for HMRC [2022] EWCA Civ 185, Court of Appeal. https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewca/civ/2022/185
- 14.Finance Act 2003, Schedule 6B — multiple dwellings relief (paragraph 5(2), 1% minimum tax); repealed for transactions with an effective date on or after 1 June 2024. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/14/schedule/6B
- 15.HMRC, Stamp Duty Land Tax Manual, SDLTM29902 — abolition of multiple dwellings relief: exchange of contracts on or before 6 March 2024. https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/stamp-duty-land-tax-manual/sdltm29902
- 16.Fiander & Brower v HMRC [2021] UKUT 156 (TCC), Upper Tribunal. https://www.gov.uk/tax-and-chancery-tribunal-decisions/keith-fiander-and-samantha-brower-v-the-commissioners-for-hm-revenue-and-customs-2021-ukut-0156-tcc
- 17.Finance Act 2003, Schedule 10 — returns, enquiries, assessments and appeals (paragraph 34, overpayment relief; paragraph 34A, excluded cases; paragraph 34B, four-year time limit). https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/14/schedule/10
Last reviewed: 26 May 2026. StampDutyBack reviews this document when the underlying legislation, HMRC guidance, or case law changes.