Rental property accounting is mostly record-keeping done at the right level of detail. A London landlord with one flat and one with twelve need the same thing: income and costs recorded per property, so the return is right and you can see which properties are genuinely worth keeping.

What to keep for each property

• Rent received, from agent statements or your bank, and any deposit retained at the end of a tenancy
• Agent fees, service charges, ground rent, insurance, licensing and safety certificates
• Repair invoices that describe the work — the description is what shows a repair rather than an improvement
• Mortgage statements showing interest separately from capital
• The purchase completion statement and invoices for capital improvements, kept until you sell, because the capital gains calculation needs them

Property allowance or actual costs

Where rental income is small, the £1,000 property allowance can be claimed instead of expenses. It is one or the other, so it only helps if your real costs are below £1,000 — which is rarely true for a London let with an agent and a mortgage.

Making Tax Digital for landlords

From 6 April 2026, landlords whose qualifying income — gross rents plus any self-employed turnover — is over £50,000 must keep digital records and send HMRC quarterly updates. The threshold falls to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. It is measured before expenses, so a landlord with two or three London flats can be in scope while making a modest profit. We set up the software and file the quarterly updates as well as the year-end return.

If you are looking for a furnished holiday let accountant, the most useful thing to know is that the regime has gone. The furnished holiday lettings rules were abolished from April 2025, and a former holiday let is now simply part of your property business. In practice:

• Mortgage interest gets the 20% tax credit instead of a full deduction — a real increase in tax for a higher-rate landlord
• The profits no longer count as earnings for pension contribution purposes
• New furniture and equipment no longer attract capital allowances; replacement of domestic items relief applies instead, though an existing pool can generally continue to be written down
• Capital gains reliefs that treated the let as a business, such as business asset disposal relief, are no longer available on a sale
• Income and losses are combined with the rest of your UK property business

The first returns after the change are where errors happen, especially where a property is jointly owned or run alongside long lets. We review the transition and reset your tax forecast so the next bill is not a surprise.

Once you own several properties, the tax question is about the portfolio as a whole. As property investment accountants we look at:

• Where the rents push your income: once total income passes £100,000 your personal allowance tapers away, and is gone at £125,140, so the effective rate in that band is well above 40%
• The next purchase: the 5% stamp duty surcharge on additional residential property, and whether to buy personally or through a company
• Sales: capital gains on residential property at 18% or 24%, reported and paid within 60 days of completion
• Refinancing: whether interest on released equity still qualifies depends on how the borrowing compares with the capital in the letting business, not only on what the money was spent on
• Ownership: how the portfolio is split between spouses or partners, and what that does to each person’s tax band

We act for landlords and investors across London and the northern boroughs, including Barnet and the EN4 and EN5 postcodes.

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• Property investment: buy-to-let
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• Making Tax Digital for individuals

The line between a repair and an improvement decides whether a cost comes off this year's rental profit or waits until you sell and reduces the capital gain instead. Replacing a broken boiler with a similar one is a repair. Adding an extension is not. Replacing single glazing with double glazing sits in between, and HMRC has a settled view on it that is worth knowing before you file.

• Letting agent fees, ground rent and service charges
• Repairs and maintenance, but not improvements
• Insurance, and the replacement of domestic items in furnished lets
• Professional fees, including our own
• Mortgage interest — as a 20% tax reducer, not a deduction

If you dispose of UK residential property at a gain, the capital gains tax has to be reported and paid within 60 days of completion — not through your annual return. The deadline is short, the calculation needs your original purchase costs and every capital improvement since, and the penalty regime for missing it is separate from your self-assessment. If a sale is coming, tell us before completion rather than after.

Companies still deduct mortgage interest in full, which is why so many landlords ask about incorporating. But moving existing property into a company is a disposal for capital gains tax and usually triggers stamp duty at the higher rates, so the transfer cost can take years to earn back. It also changes how you get the money out. We model both positions on your actual figures — including the exit — rather than assuming the answer.

It is the question every landlord asks after the finance-cost restriction, and the answer is far less often yes than the internet suggests.

A company pays corporation tax on rental profit and deducts mortgage interest in full, which is the attraction. But getting an existing property in is a sale at market value: capital gains tax on the gain to date, and stamp duty for the company at the higher rates on the way in. Those are real costs paid now against a saving spread over years.

Then taking money out is taxed again, mortgage rates for companies are usually higher, and there are accounts and filings that a personal let does not need. For someone buying their next property it can be the right structure. For someone moving three they already own, it very often is not.

Where a property is owned jointly by a married couple or civil partners, HMRC taxes the income half and half by default — regardless of who actually owns what, and regardless of which of you is the higher-rate taxpayer.

If the beneficial ownership is genuinely unequal, the split can be matched to it, but only by making a declaration and only from the date it is made. It cannot be backdated, which means the tax saved is the tax on the years after you get round to it. That makes it worth doing early in a tax year rather than late.

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Letting short-term rather than on an assured shorthold tenancy used to bring genuinely different tax treatment. That has changed, and the position now catches out landlords who set the arrangement up under the old rules and have not revisited it.

The furnished holiday letting rules have gone

The separate regime for furnished holiday lettings has been abolished, so a property let on that basis is now taxed broadly like any other residential letting. The advantages that made the structure attractive — the treatment of finance costs, the capital allowances position, and how the income was regarded for pension purposes — no longer distinguish it. If a decision in your portfolio was built on those advantages, it is worth re-examining rather than assuming it still works.

London has a 90-night limit

Letting a whole London home on a short-term basis for more than ninety nights in a calendar year requires planning permission. This is a planning rule rather than a tax one, but it has direct financial consequences: exceeding it without consent is a planning breach, and platforms have increasingly enforced the limit themselves. Any projection assuming year-round short letting of a London property needs to account for it.

VAT can enter the picture

Ordinary residential letting is exempt from VAT. Holiday and other short-stay accommodation is not — it is standard-rated, so once turnover from it passes the registration threshold, registration follows. Landlords who think of themselves as being outside VAT entirely because they let property are occasionally very surprised by this.

The services we provide for landlords include personal tax and self-assessment, inheritance tax planning and bookkeeping. Each has its own page with what is included and how we work.