Property tax insights

Practical notes on tax, accounts, and property economics, written for landlords, not generic SMEs.

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Essential guides

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The canonical guide for each major property tax topic. Start with these, then dig into the full library below.

Your annual tax cycle

The recurring work every landlord needs done right, year in, year out.

Section 24 finance-cost relief

Mortgage interest has not been a deductible expense since 6 April 2020. We model the 20% basic-rate credit and the higher-rate wedge so you see your true taxable profit, not just your cash profit.

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Making Tax Digital for Income Tax

Quarterly digital filing has been live since 6 April 2026 for landlords over £50,000, dropping to £30,000 in 2027 and £20,000 in 2028. We handle software, category mapping, and the quarterly submissions.

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Capital allowances

Fixtures and integral features in qualifying property carry allowances that are easy to miss. We separate revenue repairs from capital improvements and claim what is genuinely due.

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Self Assessment and rental schedules

SA105 property pages, every allowable expense captured, and a return that stands up to an HMRC enquiry. The annual baseline we get right for every landlord client.

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Buying, selling and structuring

The one-off decisions where the numbers are biggest and mistakes are costliest.

Capital gains tax on disposals

Residential gains are taxed at 18% and 24% and must be reported and paid within 60 days of completion. We prepare the computation, apply any reliefs, and file inside the window.

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Stamp Duty Land Tax

The 5% additional-dwellings surcharge (since 31 October 2024) and the 17% enveloped-dwelling rate change the maths on every purchase and transfer. We cost it before you commit.

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Incorporation and limited companies

We run the corporation tax saving against the SDLT and CGT cost of transferring properties in, then handle company accounts, CT600s, and tax-efficient profit extraction.

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ATED on company-held property

Residential property over £500,000 held in a company needs an annual ATED return, with relief for genuine lettings filed by 30 April. We file the relief return on time so no charge arises.

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Specialist situations

The edge cases generalist accountants rarely see - and we handle every week.

Inheritance tax and succession

Property is illiquid and routinely pushes an estate over the nil-rate band. We plan lifetime gifting, trusts, and share transfers alongside your ownership structure, not in isolation.

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VAT on commercial and mixed-use

Commercial lettings, the option to tax, and conversions carry VAT treatment that residential lets do not. We get the registration, recovery, and option-to-tax decisions right.

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Non-Resident Landlord Scheme

Overseas landlords can receive rents gross under the NRLS instead of suffering 20% withholding. We register you (NRL1 or NRL2) and keep the UK filing in order.

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Let Property Campaign disclosures

If rental income has gone unreported, the HMRC Let Property Campaign is the route to regularise it on the best available terms. We manage the disclosure from first contact to settlement.

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Browse by topic

Comprehensive guides by topic

Incorporation & Company Structures

181 articles

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Landlord Tax Essentials

163 articles

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Property Types & Specialist Tax

157 articles

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Property Accountant Services

63 articles

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Capital Gains Tax

54 articles

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Non-Resident Landlord Tax

48 articles

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Section 24 & Tax Relief

46 articles

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Making Tax Digital (MTD)

41 articles

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Property Finance

34 articles

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Portfolio Management

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The archive

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Incorporation & Company Structures
Are Landlords Really Leaving? The Net Formation Data
Almost every article answering "are landlords selling up" runs on a survey. This one runs on the Companies House register. Over the twelve settled months to June 2026, property companies were incorporated 90,390 times and dissolved 45,622 times, a net gain of 44,768 companies. In the same window gross formations fell 2.6% year on year and the headline buy-to-let code was down 20.1% in the latest settled month alone. Both facts are true at once: fewer new companies than at the 2025 peak, and a population that is still growing. This page sets out the monthly net formation series, explains why individual landlords can be selling while the company sector expands, and states plainly what the register cannot tell you.
6 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
How to Change a SIC Code at Companies House for a Property Company
A SIC code is changed through the confirmation statement, not through a separate form or application. You can wait for the annual renewal or file an updating confirmation statement at any time to correct the codes early, and if the annual payment period is already paid for, that updating statement carries no further fee. This guide covers the filing mechanics, the £50 online and £110 paper confirmation statement fee, adding a code rather than replacing one, the four-code limit, timing around a mortgage application, and what happens on the public register once the change is accepted.
7 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
Do Landlords Incorporate When House Prices Fall? What the Data Shows
We tested our own incorporation series against the UK House Price Index across the 118 months from September 2016 to June 2026 and found essentially nothing: a correlation of 0.008 between the two year-on-year series. During the only sustained price fall in the window, from July 2023 to April 2024, incorporations were not falling with prices but accelerating, reaching more than 50 per cent year-on-year growth in April 2024. The turning points in the incorporation series line up with tax events instead. This piece sets out the method so you can reproduce it, gives the year-by-year table, and explains what actually moves the number.
6 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
How Many Buy-to-Let Limited Companies Are There in the UK?
At the Companies House bulk snapshot of 1 September 2026 there were 665,645 live companies on the UK register carrying one of the four real-estate SIC codes we track (68100, 68201, 68209 and 68320). That is the stock: every property company still registered, not the number formed last year. London holds 224,647 of them, 33.7% of the register, and roughly a third of the whole live population was incorporated within the last three years. This page sets out the count, how it splits by region, how old those companies are, and why our figure is larger than the buy-to-let company totals quoted elsewhere.
7 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
How Long Do UK Property Companies Last? The Age Profile of the Register
Sort the 665,645 live UK property companies on the register by the year each was incorporated and the shape is lopsided: this is a young population. Just under a third were incorporated in 2024 or later, roughly three quarters in the last ten calendar years, and the median company on the register dates from 2021. Only about one in seven predates 2010. This page sets out that age profile band by band, explains what it says about the population of landlord companies, and is honest about the one question the data cannot answer: a live register cannot tell you the average lifespan of a company, because every company that has already died is missing from it.
6 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
Landlord Registration for a Limited Company: Scotland and Wales
England runs no national landlord register, but Scotland and Wales both do, and neither one goes away because the property sits inside a limited company. Scotland's scheme is compulsory before letting, costs £85 plus £20 per property, runs on a 3-year cycle and carries a fine of up to £50,000 for letting unregistered. Rent Smart Wales splits the duty in two, registration and licensing, and states plainly that where a company is the landlord it is the company that gets registered, on its Companies House number, for 5 years at £60 online. This guide sets the two regimes side by side for a corporate owner, marks the points that the registers do not publish, and says where to get those confirmed.
7 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
What Section 24 Actually Did to Company Formations
Almost everything written about Section 24 argues the mechanism. This page measures the response instead. Using our own count of Companies House incorporations, landlord company formations on SIC 68209 rose from 19,733 in 2016 to 69,039 in 2025, a 3.5 times increase, while the wider four-code property union series went from 33,040 to 95,140. The steepest single jump lands inside the Section 24 phase-in window, the growth continued long after the restriction was fully in force, and the settled data through June 2026 now shows the first sustained deceleration in a decade. Figures are ours, from the UK SPV Incorporation Index, settled to 2026-06.
6 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
SPV Company Name Rules UK: What Companies House Accepts
A property SPV must end in Limited or Ltd, must not be the same as an existing registered name once Companies House strips out suffixes, punctuation and words like UK, and must not use a sensitive word without approval. Ordinary property words (property, investments, holdings, estates, portfolio) are not sensitive and are free to use. A name accepted at registration can still be ordered changed if it is too like an existing name, but only within 12 months. Changing a name later costs £20 online, £30 on paper, or £85 same-day, and is decided by a members' special resolution.
11 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
UK Landlord and Buy-to-Let Company Statistics 2026
A dated, citable reference set of UK landlord and buy-to-let company statistics, drawn from the Companies House register via the UK SPV Incorporation Index. It covers monthly and annual incorporations including the 2025 record year and the first half of 2026, dissolutions and the net formation rate, the live stock of property companies and its age profile, the regional distribution of the last twelve months' formations, and growth since 2016. Every figure carries its period and its source, the two most recent months are flagged as provisional, and a citation line and CSV link are provided at the end for anyone reproducing the numbers.
6 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
How to Cite the UK SPV Incorporation Index
The UK SPV Incorporation Index is a monthly count of UK property company incorporations built entirely from Companies House open data, published free for anyone to quote. This page is the reference card: what the index measures, the current headline figures with their period and definition, the method in plain English, the copy-paste citation line, the CSV download, the Open Government Licence terms and the monthly refresh cadence. It does not interpret the numbers. The charts, the trend commentary and the year-on-year reads live on the index page itself.
6 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
Where Property Companies Are Being Formed: The Regional Data
London accounts for 35.3% of all UK property company formations in the twelve months to August 2026, more than three times the next region. This page sets out the full regional split by share of formations, using registered-office postcodes from the Companies House bulk register, and compares each region's share in the first twelve months of a 36-month window against the last twelve so you can see who gained ground and who lost it. The movements are small but consistent: the North West, West Midlands and Scotland are taking a slightly larger slice, the South East, South West and East of England a slightly smaller one. Read every figure here as a share, not as a regional count.
7 min read
Incorporation & Company Structures
Director Living in a Property Owned by a Limited Company
Yes, a director can live in a property their limited company owns, but the tax treatment is punitive unless full market rent is paid. Rent-free or below-market-rent occupation is a living-accommodation benefit in kind under ITEPA 2003 Part 3 Chapter 5 (ss.97-113), valued as the annual value of the property plus, where the property cost more than £75,000, an additional charge of the official rate of interest on the excess. The charge is reported on a P11D and carries employer Class 1A National Insurance. Occupation by a director also breaks the ATED rental-property relief, can create a section 455 charge if unpaid rent sits in the director's loan account, and is very likely to breach a buy-to-let mortgage.
11 min read

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