Guide to Completing ‘About the Buyer’ Section in Online LBTT Return

Completing the buyer section of an LBTT return

The buyer section of an LBTT return must identify the correct legal buyer and collect the right contact and tax-related information. What you need to enter depends on whether the buyer is an individual, a Companies House registered company, or another type of organisation such as a trust, partnership, charity, club, or unregistered company.

• Add each buyer separately and choose the buyer type that matches the buyer’s legal status.
• Private individuals must usually provide name, contact details, address, and a National Insurance number or other ID; title is optional.
• Companies House registered companies are entered using the company number, with company details auto-filled, but these should still be checked and amended if needed.
• Other organisations must state their type, give the organisation’s name, address, governing country, and contact person details; charities must also provide a charity number.
• The return also asks whether the buyer is connected to the seller under section 58 of the LBTT(S)A 2013 and whether the buyer is acting as a trustee or representative partner.
• For overseas addresses, enter the address manually and put any international postcode in the building and street fields rather than the postcode box.

Scroll down for the full analysis.

How to complete the buyer section of an LBTT return

This page explains what information is needed in the “About the buyer” section of an online Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) return. The main point is that the information required depends on what kind of buyer is involved, and the return also asks some extra questions that can affect the tax analysis, such as whether the buyer is connected to the seller or is acting as a trustee or representative partner.

What this rule is about

The buyer section identifies who is acquiring the property and how they should be described on the return. That matters because LBTT returns are not limited to individual purchasers. A transaction may involve a private individual, a company registered at Companies House, or another type of organisation such as a partnership, trust, charity, club, or unregistered company.

The return is designed so that different buyer types trigger different data fields. In practice, this means you should first decide what legal person or entity is buying the property, and only then complete the detailed fields.

This section also gathers information relevant to the tax treatment of the transaction. In particular, the return asks whether the buyer and seller are connected persons and whether the buyer is acting as a trustee or representative partner for tax purposes.

What the official source says

The official guidance says you can add a buyer by using the “add a buyer” button in the buyer section. This allows more than one buyer to be entered where necessary.

You must then choose the buyer type most relevant to that buyer. The source divides buyers into three broad categories:

• Private individual
• Organisation registered with Companies House
• Another organisation

For “another organisation”, the guidance says this includes partnership, trust, charity, club, other, and a company not registered with Companies House.

If the buyer is a private individual, the return asks for:

• title
• first name
• last name
• telephone number
• email
• National Insurance number, or another form of ID if there is no National Insurance number
• address

The source says all of these fields are mandatory except title.

The return also asks whether a different address should be used for future correspondence about the return. If yes, the buyer’s contact address must be entered.

If the buyer is an organisation registered with Companies House, the return asks for the registered company number. The company name and address are then populated automatically, but can be edited if necessary. The return also requires contact details for a company contact, including:

• first name
• last name
• job title or position
• address
• email
• contact phone number

If the buyer is another organisation, the return asks you to select the organisation type. If “other” is selected, you must explain what type of organisation it is. If “charity” is selected, you must provide the charity number.

For this category, the return asks for:

• name of the organisation
• address of the organisation
• the country whose law governs the organisation, meaning where it is registered

It then asks for contact details for the organisation’s point of contact:

• first name
• last name
• job title or position
• address
• email
• contact phone number

Under buyer details, the return also asks:

• whether the buyer is connected to the seller
• whether the buyer is acting as a trustee or representative partner for tax purposes

The source says you should answer “yes” to the connected persons question if the buyer and seller are connected persons as defined by section 58 of the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (Scotland) Act 2013.

Finally, the guidance includes a practical point about international postcodes. It says these should not be entered in the postcode box. Instead, you should choose the option to enter the address manually and place the international postcode in the building and street text boxes.

What this means in practice

The practical task is not just typing in names and addresses. You need to identify the correct legal status of the buyer before completing the return.

If an individual is buying in a personal capacity, the private individual route should usually be used. If a UK-registered company is buying, the Companies House route is likely to be appropriate. If the buyer is something else, such as trustees, a partnership, or an overseas body, the “another organisation” route may be the correct one.

This matters because the return is trying to capture both the legal identity of the buyer and the right contact details for Revenue Scotland’s purposes. Choosing the wrong category may lead to an inaccurate return or practical problems later, especially if Revenue Scotland needs to correspond about the filing.

The connected persons question matters because connected-party status can be relevant elsewhere in the LBTT rules. The source page does not explain those consequences in detail, but it makes clear that the answer should be based on the statutory definition in section 58.

The trustee or representative partner question matters because the person named on the return may be acting in a representative capacity rather than for themselves. Again, the source does not set out the wider tax consequences, but it signals that the return needs to reflect that role accurately.

Where there is more than one buyer, each buyer should be added separately using the function provided.

How to analyse it

A sensible way to complete this section is to work through the following questions in order.

• Who is the actual legal buyer of the property?
• Is that buyer an individual, a Companies House registered company, or another kind of organisation?
• If it is another organisation, what type is it: for example a trust, partnership, charity, club, or unregistered company?
• If it is a charity, do you have the charity number ready?
• If it is an overseas or non-UK body, what country’s law governs it?
• Who should be listed as the contact person for future correspondence?
• Should correspondence go to a different address from the buyer’s main address?
• Is the buyer connected to the seller within the statutory definition?
• Is the buyer acting as a trustee or representative partner for tax purposes?
• Are there multiple buyers who all need to be entered separately?

For addresses outside the UK, do not force the international postcode into the postcode field if the system rejects it. The guidance says to enter the address manually and put the international postcode into the building and street lines instead.

Example

A Scottish property is bought by two trustees of a family trust. They are not buying as private individuals for themselves, and the buyer is not a company registered with Companies House. On the return, the buyer is likely to fall within “another organisation”, with the organisation identified as a trust. The return would then require the trust’s organisational details, the governing country, and a contact person’s details. The filer would also need to answer the separate question about whether the buyer is acting as a trustee for tax purposes.

Why this can be difficult in practice

The hardest part is often deciding who the buyer really is for return purposes. The source page is mainly procedural, so it tells you what fields appear on the form, but it does not fully explain every legal distinction behind them.

For example, some transactions involve people signing documents in one capacity while the beneficial or represented buyer is someone else. Trusts, partnerships, charities, and overseas entities can also create uncertainty if the legal structure is not straightforward.

The connected persons question can also be difficult. The source points to section 58 of the LBTT(S)A 2013, but does not summarise that definition. In practice, whether parties are connected can depend on relationships between individuals, companies, trusts, and other entities, and the answer may not always be obvious from the transaction documents alone.

Another practical issue is that the Companies House lookup may populate company name and address details automatically, but the source says these can be edited if necessary. That suggests you should still check the populated information rather than assume it is correct for the purposes of the return.

Key takeaways

• The buyer section must reflect the buyer’s correct legal status, not just the most convenient category on the form.
• Different buyer types require different information, and additional questions cover connected persons and trustee or representative partner status.
• For international addresses, use manual address entry and place the international postcode in the building and street fields rather than the postcode box.

This page was last updated on 24 March 2026

Useful article? You may find it helpful to read the original guidance here: Guide to Completing ‘About the Buyer’ Section in Online LBTT Return

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