Can I get the Additional Dwelling Supplement back if I sell my previous home?

If you paid the Additional Dwelling Supplement (ADS) on a Scottish home and then sold the home you lived in before, you can usually claim the supplement back. The rule is that you sell your previous property within 36 months of buying the new one, that the property you sold was your only or main residence at some point in the 36 months before the purchase, and that you have lived in the new property as your only or main residence¹.

The window is not always 36 months. For transactions up to and including 31 March 2024, the 36 months is an 18-month period¹. Revenue Scotland's technical guidance puts the same split in terms of the effective date: an 18-month period to dispose of the previous main residence for transactions with an effective date up to and including 31 March 2024, and a 36-month period for transactions with an effective date on or after 1 April 2024².

The supplement itself is an amount of tax on transactions involving second homes or buy-to-let properties³. It is calculated alongside your Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), included on the LBTT return and paid at the same time as your LBTT¹. If the conditions are met, Revenue Scotland aims to process the repayment within 10 working days and repays the ADS to you with interest⁴.

You can reclaim ADS if you sell your previous main home in time

The supplement exists to catch buyers who own more than one dwelling on the day a transaction completes. The refund exists because that position is often temporary: someone buys the next home before the old one has sold, pays the supplement on the whole purchase, and then completes the sale of the previous home weeks or months later.

Revenue Scotland's own statistics describe the rule as it stood for 2023/24: the payment can be reclaimed if the previous main residence is sold within 18 months, and the claim is made within five years of the submission date⁵. An earlier statistical publication uses the same 18-month and five-year figures⁶. Those describe the position before the window was extended, which is why the current guidance splits by effective date.

The supplement applies to second homes and buy-to-let purchases, and the independent review of LBTT published in March 2026 describes it in exactly those terms³. It does not apply to every purchase of an additional property. Generally, the ADS does not apply to non-residential property transactions⁷. Inherited dwellings, by contrast, do count towards the dwellings a buyer owns for ADS purposes, so a property left to you can affect whether the supplement is charged even though you did not buy it⁷.

Where a parent buys jointly with a child, the supplement can apply if the parent owns more than one dwelling and has not replaced their main residence⁷. That is a common trap in family purchases, and it turns on the position on the effective date of the transaction rather than on who will live there.

The time limit: 18 or 36 months depending on when you bought

The single most important date is the effective date of your purchase, because it decides which window applies.

Revenue Scotland's technical guidance states the same split in the same terms, describing an 18-month period for transactions with an effective date up to and including 31 March 2024 and a 36-month period for transactions with an effective date on or after 1 April 2024².

The period runs from the date you bought your new main residence, not from the date the return was filed or the supplement paid. Revenue Scotland's claim guidance spells this out: the 18 or 36 month period, depending on your effective date, ends on the date you bought your new main residence⁴.

That distinction matters if your purchase and your return were separated in time. A return filed late does not extend the window, because the window is tied to the purchase date. If you are close to the boundary, the date on the disposition of your purchase is the one to check.

Conditions your sale must meet

Selling the previous property inside the window is necessary but not sufficient. Revenue Scotland sets out three conditions together: you sell your previous property within 36 months of the date of buying your new one; the property sold was your only or main residence at any time in the 36 months before you bought the property you paid ADS on; and you have lived in the property you paid ADS on as your only or main residence¹.

The second condition is the one that catches people out. The property you sold does not have to have been your main residence immediately before the purchase, but it must have been your only or main residence at some point in the 36 months before it. A home you rented out for years and then sold may not satisfy that test.

The third condition is about the new property. If you paid the supplement on a property you have not occupied as your only or main residence, the repayment conditions are not met.

There is a separate route where the sale happens quickly. ADS does not require to be paid where the sale of the previous main residence occurs after the effective date of the purchase but before the LBTT return has been made². In that case the return is filed without the supplement rather than with it, so there is nothing to reclaim. The timing of the return relative to the sale is what decides which route applies.

How to claim the refund online

There are two routes, and which one is open to you depends on how much time has passed since the return was filed.

The first is amending the original LBTT return, if you are within the statutory 12-month amendment period set by section 83(2) of the Revenue Scotland and Tax Powers Act 2014. The second is claiming repayment of an overpayment of tax under section 107 of the same Act, within 5 years of the tax return due date². The five-year route is the one that matters for most people, because the sale of a previous home often completes well over a year after the purchase.

Claims can be made as a taxpayer or through an agent¹. The ADS Repayment Claim Form is submitted by email to lbtt@revenue.scot, and that email route is specified for new agents and for Power of Attorney or guardianship claimants⁴.

If a solicitor or agent is claiming on your behalf, the request should include a letter of authority from all of the buyers on the return⁸. That requirement comes from the equivalent process for Stamp Duty Land Tax refunds in England and Northern Ireland, and it reflects the general point that a refund paid to one buyer on a jointly owned property needs the authority of the others.

Evidence you need to send with a late claim

For claims made more than 12 months from the filing date of the original return, proof of sale of the previous property is required⁴. That is a firm requirement rather than a preference, and it applies to the five-year route in practice because most claims on that route are made long after the return.

Revenue Scotland lists the documents it accepts as proof of sale: a copy of the disposition of sale, a copy of Land Registration documents, or a letter from your solicitor that clearly states the date of sale⁴.

Its technical guidance takes a wider view of what will be considered: any documentary evidence you can provide to support the claim, such as a copy of the signed disposition of sale, Land Registration documents, a solicitor's letter stating the sale and the date of entry, a Council Tax bill, a utilities bill or a bank statement².

For evidence that the property was your main residence, the claim guidance gives a Council Tax bill, a utilities bill or a bank statement⁴. Those are the documents that show occupation rather than ownership, which is the point the second condition turns on.

Where a refund is refused: no exceptions for missed deadlines

Revenue Scotland is explicit that the conditions are not discretionary. In cases where the repayment conditions are not met, including where a previous main residence is sold outwith the time limit, no repayment may be claimed, and there are no provisions for exceptional circumstances².

That means a sale that completes a month after the window closes does not produce a partial refund or a reduced one. It produces nothing. The same applies where the property sold was not your only or main residence at any point in the relevant period, or where you did not live in the property you paid the supplement on.

There is a related point about first-time buyer relief. If ADS is payable on the transaction, first-time buyer relief is not available⁹. The two reliefs do not stack, so a buyer who pays the supplement cannot fall back on first-time buyer relief if the refund claim later fails. First-time buyer relief must be claimed in the first LBTT return made in relation to the transaction, or in an amendment to that return¹⁰.

Where a claim is refused, the routes for challenge are the ones that apply to LBTT generally rather than a bespoke appeal against the refund decision. MoneyHelper provides free, impartial guidance on tax and property questions for consumers, and the Financial Ombudsman Service deals with complaints about financial firms rather than about tax decisions.

How the other UK nations handle the same situation

Scotland is not the only part of the UK where a supplement is charged and then refunded, and the deadlines differ. In Wales, the taxpayer has up to three years to sell their previous main residence and claim a refund of the higher rates of Land Transaction Tax¹¹. The same three-year figure appears in a later Welsh statistical publication¹² and in an earlier one¹³.

In England and Northern Ireland, the equivalent rule for Stamp Duty Land Tax is that if you sell or give away your previous main home in the 3 years after you buy your new home, you can apply for a refund of the higher rate part of your SDLT bill⁸. A lender's own guidance describes the same three-year position for stamp duty refunds on second homes¹⁴, and independent guidance on let-to-buy sets out that if you sell your original property within three years you can claim back the difference between what you paid and the normal home mover rates¹⁵.

The practical difference is the length of the window and the point it runs from. Scotland's window is 18 or 36 months from the purchase, depending on the effective date. Wales and England and Northern Ireland both use three years. If you have bought in more than one nation, or moved between them, the rule that applies is the one for the nation where the tax was paid.