Stamp duty at 7.5% on commercial property and land.
Stamp duty due
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Your breakdown
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One flat rate on the whole price
Non-residential stamp duty is refreshingly simple to calculate and unpleasantly large to pay. There are no bands. A flat 7.5 percent applies to the entire purchase price or market value, whichever is higher, from the first euro to the last. Commercial buildings, offices, shops, industrial units, and most land all fall under this rate. It is more than seven times the 1 percent that applies to an ordinary home, which is a gap worth understanding before you sign anything.
What counts as non-residential is broader than people expect. Bare sites, agricultural land, car parking spaces sold separately, and goodwill attached to a business can all attract the 7.5 percent charge. The category is essentially everything that is not a dwelling, so a mixed transaction often has to be split between the residential and non-residential parts.
600,000 euro of commercial property
Take a small office unit bought for 600,000 euro. There is nothing to band and nothing to apportion: the duty is simply 7.5 percent of 600,000 euro, which is 45,000 euro. The total cash needed to acquire the unit is therefore 645,000 euro before legal and professional fees. That single line is large enough to change whether a deal stacks up, which is why it belongs in the model from the outset rather than as an afterthought.
The chart puts the 45,000 euro duty next to the 600,000 euro price so the scale is honest. The duty is a thin but very real slice on top of the price.
The farmland reliefs and the residential refund worth knowing
The 7.5 percent headline is not always the end of the story. Young trained farmers can qualify for full relief on agricultural land where strict conditions on age, qualifications, and a business plan are met, and consanguinity relief reduces the rate to 1 percent on transfers of farmland between close relatives. Separately, where non-residential land is bought and then developed into housing within a set time, a residential development stamp duty refund scheme can claw back a large part of the duty. These are valuable but heavily conditional, so confirm eligibility with a tax adviser before relying on them.
A common and expensive error is misclassifying a property with development potential. A site with planning permission for houses is still non-residential at the point of purchase and is charged at 7.5 percent, even though the end use is residential. Buyers who assume the lower residential rate applies can be caught short by tens of thousands of euro at completion. Get the classification confirmed in writing before you commit.
Common queries
Is the duty charged on the price including VAT?
Where VAT applies to a commercial sale, stamp duty is generally charged on the VAT-exclusive consideration. The interaction between VAT and stamp duty on commercial property is intricate, so it is one to check on the specific transaction rather than assume.
Can I deduct stamp duty against my tax?
You cannot deduct it against income, but stamp duty paid on acquiring an asset is added to its base cost. That means it reduces the chargeable gain, and therefore the capital gains tax, when you eventually sell the property. Keep the stamping record with your purchase file for that future calculation.
What if I buy the company that owns the property instead of the property itself?
Buying shares rather than the asset is a different transaction with its own stamp duty treatment, and the rate on shares is not the same 7.5 percent that applies to the property. Some buyers structure a deal as a share purchase partly for that reason, but it brings the company’s history and liabilities with it, so the saving has to be weighed against the extra due diligence and risk. This is firmly a question for a solicitor and tax adviser on the specific deal, not a decision to make on the headline rate alone.