SDLT Receipts to July 2026: The Tax Take Rose, Stamp Duty on Homes Did Not

What HMRC Published

HMRC released its monthly tax receipts bulletin at 07:00 on 21 August 2026, adding July data. Total HMRC receipts for April to July 2026 were £322.7bn, £19.1bn higher than the same four months of 2025. Within that, the bulletin reported stamp taxes of £6.9bn, up £0.5bn on the year, which most coverage rendered as an 8% rise in stamp duty.

The 8% is arithmetically correct for the line HMRC labels “stamp taxes”. It is not the number that describes what buyers paid on homes, and the gap between the two is wide enough to change the conclusion.

Why the 8% Figure Is Not Stamp Duty on Homes

HMRC's monthly table carries three separate columns that are never summed in the underlying data but are combined in the bulletin commentary:

• Stamp Duty Land Tax, charged on property purchases in England and Northern Ireland.
• Stamp Duty Shares, which is stamp duty and Stamp Duty Reserve Tax on share transactions. Nothing to do with housing.
• Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings, an annual charge on residential property held in companies, which is small and heavily concentrated in April.

A further point is easy to lose. None of these figures include Scotland or Wales, which charge LBTT and LTT through Revenue Scotland and the Welsh Revenue Authority. There is no such thing as a single UK stamp duty receipts total, so any figure quoted should be labelled England and Northern Ireland.

Figures below are taken from the statistics table published alongside the bulletin rather than from the commentary, and are stated in £ millions on a cash basis.

SDLT Alone, Month by Month

Stripping out shares and ATED, this is SDLT on its own for the calendar year to date, against the same months of 2025 and 2024.

On the financial year basis HMRC uses, April to July 2026 SDLT was £4,980m against £4,713m in the same months of 2025, a rise of £267m or 5.7%. That is real growth, but it is not 8%, and it sits alongside a calendar year that has gone almost nowhere: £8,031m against £8,020m, a difference of £11m on a base of eight billion.

For context on the annual totals, SDLT finished 2025-26 at £15,159m, up 9.2% on the £13.9bn of 2024-25. The full receipts breakdown and four-nation split covers those years in more depth.

July Fell Year on Year

July 2026 SDLT was £1,386m against £1,422m in July 2025, a fall of £36m or 2.5%. It is the first year-on-year decline in a single month since April, and it follows two strongly positive months in May and June.

The swing is largely about the comparison base rather than a turn in the market. May and June 2025 were unusually weak because transactions had been pulled forward ahead of the April 2025 threshold changes, leaving the months immediately after them thin. That made May and June 2026 look strong against an easy base. July 2025, by contrast, was not weak. HMRC has attributed the strength from July to October 2025 to the thresholds coming down, which raises the tax collected per transaction and persists rather than unwinding. Comparing against that firmer base, July 2026 came in slightly lower.

Where the Growth Actually Came From

Splitting the £516m increase in combined stamp taxes for April to July into its three components shows why the property and headline numbers diverge.

Just under half of the increase, £251m of £516m, came from stamp duty on shares, which grew at nearly three times the rate of SDLT. Property is the larger component in absolute terms and still grew, but it is not what drove the headline.

How Many Properties Changed Hands

Receipts measure money collected. They say nothing directly about how many properties were bought, and HMRC publishes that count in a different release. On 28 August 2026, a week after the receipts bulletin, it added July data to its monthly property transactions statistics.

The two bases disagree on direction, which is why HMRC publishes both. Seasonally adjusted residential transactions fell from 98,390 in June 2026 to 96,710 in July, and HMRC presents that series to show the underlying trend once the normal shape of the year is stripped out. The unadjusted count, which is simply the number of completions recorded, rose 3% on June and was 5% above July 2025.

With the geography stated, the two series point the same way for the month itself. UK residential transactions were 1% lower than July 2025 on the seasonally adjusted basis, and England and Northern Ireland SDLT receipts were 2.5% lower than July 2025. Neither is a large move, and both are measured against a July 2025 that had not been hollowed out by the pull-forward earlier that year.

Across the financial year to date the two series separate. April to July 2026 UK residential transactions were 393,800 seasonally adjusted, against 342,900 in the same four months of 2025, a rise of 50,900 or 14.8%. England and Northern Ireland SDLT receipts rose 5.7% over the same window. Two mechanical points account for most of that gap before any reading of the market. First, the base: HMRC attributes the March 2025 peak in transactions, and the drop in April 2025, to completions brought forward ahead of the threshold reductions that took effect on 1 April 2025, so the four months being compared against are unusually thin in volume terms. Second, receipts lag completions. SDLT is due within 14 days of completion, so cash recorded in April 2025 still included tax on March 2025 completions, the largest month of the rush. Volumes recorded that drop immediately. Receipts did not.

HMRC attaches two cautions to this data that are worth carrying over. The latest month is provisional, compiled before all SDLT, LBTT and LTT returns have been received, and figures generally settle after about three months. And because the series counts completions, which HMRC notes come on average two to four months after an initial offer is made on a property, it does not necessarily represent the current strength of the market.

What This Says About the Market

Taken with those transaction volumes and the wider data released alongside the receipts, the picture is a market that is steady rather than either recovering or deteriorating sharply. The ONS bulletin of 19 August put average UK house prices at £272,000 in June 2026, with annual inflation slowing to 2.0%, the second consecutive monthly slowdown, and attributed the softer comparison to price growth having been stronger in the months after the April 2025 SDLT changes. London prices were down 2.5% over the year.

For SDLT, flat receipts across a calendar year in which thresholds have not moved implies transaction volumes and prices are broadly holding rather than growing. That matters ahead of the Autumn Budget on 28 October 2026, because reform arguments on both sides lean on receipts data. Proposals to reduce or replace stamp duty have been circulating through the summer, including a report on 19 August arguing that abolition could support around 300,000 additional home moves a year. We track the live proposals on our stamp duty reform page.

Nothing in this release changes any rate or threshold. Current SDLT rates remain as set in April 2025.

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