Capital Gains Tax

London sole agency is quoted at 1.5% plus VAT, or 1.8% of your sale price: about £9,970 on the average London home of £553,870. There is no legal cap, and on a taxable sale roughly a quarter comes back.

Yes, you can sell your own home without an estate agent. On a £300,000 sale that keeps about £3,860 of commission, unless one of five things makes the answer no for your sale.

The cheapest advertised estate agent fees start at £129, against an average 1.42% commission that costs £4,260 on a £300,000 sale. Which is genuinely cheaper turns on your sale price and on whether the sale is taxable.

Moving at the England average of £293,262 costs about £13,275 once you count both ends of the chain. Some of that comes off a tax bill now, some is banked against your next sale, and the rest is gone.

Most sole agency tie-ins run 4 or 12 weeks, and the notice usually sits on top, so 12 plus 4 means 16 weeks. Sole selling rights can make you owe the fee on a buyer you found yourself.

Full management on a flat let at £1,200 a month costs £2,073.60 a year with VAT. Your letting fees come off your rental profit each year; the sale commission comes off your capital gain instead.

Most sellers pay 1.3% to 1.42% including VAT, or about £3,900 to £4,260 on a £300,000 house. If the property was ever let, or it is not your only home, that commission also comes off your taxable gain.

The modern method of auction is not a binding sale. It is a reservation, bought with a buyer fee of usually at least 2.5% plus VAT, and your price is quietly lower because someone had to find it.

An online estate agent charges a flat fee, often £999, where a high street agent would charge about £4,260 on a £300,000 sale. The saving is £3,181 once the £80 identity check goes in, and you run the viewings.

A builder's part exchange offer is 80% to 90% of open market value: £30,000 to £60,000 gone on a £300,000 home, against an agent fee around £4,260. You are buying a guaranteed date and paying for it in the price.

With a flat fee online agent you save about £3,181 on a £300,000 sale, and less after tax, because the fee you avoid was also a deduction. This page is the process: the ten steps, the portal rule, the paperwork.

Auction fees take roughly £6,600 to £9,800 on a £250,000 sale, on the ranges Auction Link and Clive Emson publish. You are bound at the hammer, paid 28 days later, and taxed from the earlier of those two dates.

Selling a probate house worth £290,000 costs the estate roughly £8,400 to £10,300, against about £5,000 for an ordinary sale. Cost is rarely what stops the sale: the order of operations is, and you cannot complete without the grant.

Gains on shares held outside an ISA or a pension are taxed at 18% and 24% for 2026/27, the same two rates that apply to residential property, because the rates were aligned on 30 October 2024. Your first £3,000 of gains each year is free of tax, but that £3,000 is one allowance across everything you sell, so a property disposal and a share sale in the same year compete for it. The real difference between shares and property is not the rate, it is the reporting: a share gain goes on your Self Assessment return with payment due by the following 31 January, while a residential property gain has its own return and a 60-day deadline. The rates, the allowance, the share matching rules that decide your cost, the ISA and pension exemptions, and the points where holding both shares and property changes the answer are all set out below.

Sell a second home in the UK in 2026/27 and you pay capital gains tax at 18% or 24% on the gain above your £3,000 annual exempt amount, with the tax reported and paid within 60 days of completion where tax is due. This page works the whole calculation through at 2026/27 figures: what counts as your gain, which costs you can deduct, how the 18% and 24% slices are decided by your other income, what Private Residence Relief is worth if you ever lived there, how a spouse or civil partner transfer adds a second allowance and a second basic rate band, and the 60-day deadline. It also sets out, honestly, which of the popular ways to avoid capital gains tax on a second property do not work and why.

No. Limited companies do not pay capital gains tax. When your company sells a property, the profit is a chargeable gain that goes into the corporation tax computation and is taxed at the corporation tax rate for the accounting period: 19% where augmented profits are at or below £50,000, 25% where they reach £250,000, and marginal relief in between for 2026/27. Your company gets no £3,000 annual exempt amount and no 18% or 24% CGT rates, but it does still get indexation allowance on base costs incurred up to December 2017, where the allowance is frozen. There is no 60-day CGT return either, because the gain is reported on the CT600. This page sets out the company rate table, the gain calculation, the reporting deadlines, how commercial property and land sales work, and the separate question of what you personally pay when you sell shares in the company instead of the property.

Business Asset Disposal Relief (BADR) exists to reward owners of trading businesses with a lower CGT rate on qualifying disposals. Most residential property owners do not qualify. The rate is now 18% from 6 April 2026 (Finance Act 2025 s.8), up from 14% the year before and 10% historically. The advantage over the standard 24% residential CGT rate has narrowed to 6 percentage points. This page sets out the statutory trading test under TCGA 1992 ss.169H, 169I and 169S, why buy-to-let investment property fails that test, what the FHL abolition from April 2025 changed, where the serviced-accommodation edge case sits post-abolition, how a genuine property trading company can qualify, and how the £1 million lifetime limit works across multiple disposals.

When you inherit a UK property, the capital gains tax rules are nothing like buying at market value. Under TCGA 1992 s.62, the gain that built up during the deceased's lifetime simply disappears for CGT purposes. Your base cost resets to the market value at the date of death, the probate value. This guide explains how that works in practice, when the personal representative pays CGT instead of you, how private residence relief interacts with inherited property, and when a 60-day return is required.

UK tax residents pay CGT on worldwide gains, including property located overseas. This guide covers the FX conversion mechanics (each amount at its own transaction-date spot rate per Bentley v Pike and CG78310), how Foreign Tax Credit Relief under TIOPA 2010 offsets foreign tax paid, why the 60-day UK property return does NOT apply to overseas disposals, and which Self Assessment pages to complete.

You do not pay stamp duty when you gift a property outright, because SDLT is charged on what the recipient gives you and a genuine gift has no price. The exception is the mortgage: if the person receiving the property takes over the loan, that balance is taxed at 2026/27 residential rates, plus the 5% surcharge where they already own a home. Property you inherit carries no SDLT at all. Stamp duty is also the smallest tax in the stack, which is why gifts go wrong. This guide answers the stamp duty question first, then the capital gains tax bill that lands on you as the giver, the inheritance tax 7-year clock, the reservation of benefit trap and the income tax attribution rule, with worked examples.

Thinking of selling a property to crystallise a loss, or using your CGT annual exemption and then rebuying it? It does not work, and here is exactly why. Bed-and-breakfasting in UK tax is a share-side concept under TCGA 1992 s.106A: a 30-day matching rule that cancels the loss-claim effect of selling and rebuying the same class of securities. The rule applies to securities only, not to land or buildings. For direct property the operative traps are elsewhere: TCGA 1992 s.17 (disposals between connected persons deemed at market value regardless of actual consideration) and TCGA 1992 s.18 (losses on connected-persons disposals ring-fenced to future gains on disposals to the same connected person). Add the reduced annual exempt amount (£3,000 from 6 April 2024 per FA 2024) and the Part 8ZB trading-line trap on repeated transactions, and most bed-and-breakfasting-adjacent strategies for property landlords no longer work.

HMRC's One-Too-Many nudge-letter campaigns repeatedly target prior hold-over relief claims under TCGA 1992 section 165 (gifts of business assets) and section 260 (gifts on which inheritance tax is chargeable). Landlord claims fail at three points: buy-to-let gifts where section 165 was claimed despite the trade-versus-investment line under the settled HMRC view and Pawson by analogy; gifts into discretionary trusts where the settlor-interested trust exclusion at sections 169B and 169C disapplies section 260 relief; and mixed-estate gifts where the agricultural bifurcation under Schedule 7 Part 1 was not properly applied. Here is how to respond inside the 60-day window: the statutory framework that decides whether your prior claim survives, the Digital Disclosure Service route if it does not, the Schedule 24 FA 2007 penalty exposure that follows, and the 30-day appeal window if HMRC issues an amended assessment.

HMRC's One-Too-Many nudge-letter campaigns have repeatedly targeted prior Business Asset Disposal Relief claims under TCGA 1992 sections 169H to 169SA (formerly Entrepreneurs' Relief, renamed by Finance Act 2020 section 23). Three landlord-cohort fail-points cluster here: former Furnished Holiday Let operators who disposed in 2024/25 or 2025/26 without checking the Finance Act 2025 Schedule 5 Part 4 transitional protection; LtdCo property-portfolio directors who claimed BADR on share disposal despite the company being investment not trading; and share disposals where the section 169S(3) tri-conditional 5% economic-interest test failed during the 2-year qualifying period. This page sets out the BADR architecture, the rate trajectory (10% pre-6-April-2025, 14% from 6 April 2025, 18% from 6 April 2026), the £1 million lifetime cap (NOT the historic £10 million), the 2-year qualifying period under section 169I(3), the FHL transitional protection mechanic, the 60-day operational response sequence, the Schedule 24 penalty exposure, and the 30-day appeal window under TMA 1970 section 31A.

CGT deferral on a property disposal pushes the tax point into the future without erasing the gain. The four routes that work for property investors in 2026/27 are: EIS deferral relief under Schedule 5B TCGA 1992 (the only route that works on any chargeable gain, including standard BTL), incorporation relief under section 162 (the typical portfolio-landlord route), s.165 / s.260 holdover for narrow gift cases, and the s.152 rollover route (closed to standard BTL investment). This guide sets out the mechanics, the trade-offs and the case where each route is the right answer.

A capital loss on a UK rental property is claimable for four years after the end of the tax year of disposal (TMA 1970 s.43). Once claimed, the loss offsets capital gains in the same year first (before the £3,000 annual exempt amount) and any unused balance carries forward indefinitely. This guide walks the section 16 TCGA 1992 computation, the joint-ownership split, the section 58 spouse trap, and the negligible value claim route for worthless property assets.

Lettings Relief under section 223B TCGA 1992 (inserted by Finance Act 2020) is a narrow CGT relief for live-in landlords who shared occupation with their tenants. The pre-2020 framework (which gave up to £40,000 of relief on the let portion of a former main residence even without shared occupation) was repealed. The £40,000 cap remains, but the gateway is now shared occupation. The cut-off is the date of DISPOSAL, not the date of letting: a disposal on or after 6 April 2020 attracts the post-2020 rules across the entire letting period. This guide sets out the post-2020 framework, the lower-of-three computation under s.223B(4), the spouse interaction, the Rent-a-Room scheme distinction, and the corrected transitional-rule position per HMRC CG64710.

Principal Private Residence Relief (PRR) under sections 222 to 226 TCGA 1992 exempts the slice of your gain that falls in the period a property was your only or main residence, plus the final 9 months of ownership. If you lived in a place, moved out and let it before selling (the 'accidental landlord' pattern), this is the relief that decides most of your CGT bill. Lettings Relief, restricted from 6 April 2020 to shared-occupation lettings only under section 223B (inserted by FA 2020), now helps in far fewer cases than landlords expect. The mechanics that matter are the section 222 framework, the 9-month rule and deemed-occupation extensions, the half-hectare permitted area, the post-2020 Lettings Relief reframe, the one-residence-per-couple rule, and the separating-spouse extension widened by Finance (No. 2) Act 2023.

Ten distinct levers reduce CGT on a UK property disposal: the £3,000 annual exempt amount, the spouse-AEA stack, Private Residence Relief, capital loss offset, base-cost capitalisation, tax-year straddling, the spouse-rate-band split, post-2020 Lettings Relief in shared-occupation cases only, BADR (closed for FHL post-5 April 2025), and incorporation relief as a deferral lever. This guide routes each lever to its specialist depth page and sets out the decision table for which lever fits which fact pattern.

Section 152 TCGA 1992 business asset rollover relief defers CGT when a trader reinvests disposal proceeds into a qualifying replacement asset. The qualifying-asset gateway in section 155 Class 1 Head A requires the asset to be 'occupied (as well as used) only for the purposes of the trade'. Standard residential letting is settled as investment activity, not a trade, under the Salisbury House Estates v Fry [1930] line of authority, which closes rollover to most BTL landlords. The narrow groups that do qualify are commercial owner-occupiers, property developers with evidenced trading status, and (pre-6-April-2025 only) FHL businesses. This guide sets out the framework, the case-law spine, the two worked examples (qualifying vs failed), and the alternative reliefs for landlords who do not qualify.

When you sell a jointly owned main residence, each of you claims Private Residence Relief on your own share of the gain separately. The relief is fact-by-fact at owner level, but two cross-rules in TCGA 1992 s.222 reshape the picture for couples: the s.222(5) nomination election that lets a couple owning two residences choose which one qualifies as the main residence (with a 2-year window from acquisition of the second), and the s.222(6) one-residence-per-couple rule that limits a married or civil-partner couple to one main residence between them while they live together. Covers the joint-ownership PRR computation, the election mechanics, why unmarried co-owners can each have their own main residence, how Form 17 does (and does not) interact with PRR, and the inter-spouse no-gain-no-loss route for restructuring base cost before disposal.

What personal representatives actually do when a UK rental property passes through probate: valuing the property at the date of death, choosing between the excepted-estate route and IHT400, applying for the grant, running the property during the administration period, deciding whether to sell or assent, and handing over the non-resident landlord scheme if a beneficiary lives abroad.

Section 10A TCGA 1992 applied to UK landlords and property investors. The 5-years-or-less period, the 4-of-7-prior-years pre-condition, what's caught and what isn't, how the rule interacts with non-resident CGT on UK land, and the planning consequences for a landlord-emigrant considering a return to the UK within 5 years.

The confirmed April 2027 change for property landlords is the new separate income tax rates (22% basic, 42% higher, 47% additional) on rental profits. CGT rates on property remain at 18%/24% with no confirmed change. The 2027 income tax change still reshapes the disposal calculus: ongoing rental income becomes more expensive after tax, which shifts the sell-vs-hold and personal-vs-company decisions even though the CGT rate is static.

The CGT regime for UK residential property disposals in 2026/27: 18% basic rate, 24% higher rate, £3,000 annual exempt amount, 60-day reporting requirement for UK residents where tax is due. Non-residents file for any UK land disposal. This pillar guide sets out the framework and links to the daughter pages on specific topics (calculation walkthrough, payment deadlines, PRR mechanics, disposal-timing planning).

Capital gains tax on property sale UK 2026 follows established rates but with reduced annual exemptions. Understanding the rules and available reliefs can significantly reduce your tax liability when disposing of investment properties.

The CGT annual exempt amount for 2026/27 remains £3,000 per person. Strategic planning around this allowance can reduce your capital gains tax liability when selling property.

The CGT calculation on a buy-to-let sale follows a fixed sequence: identify proceeds and base cost, deduct allowable costs and reliefs, apply the £3,000 annual exempt amount, split the taxable gain across the 18% and 24% bands, then report and pay via the 60-day CGT on UK property service. This guide walks through the mechanics with five worked examples covering the common variants.

Gifting UK residential property to a family member is treated as a disposal at market value for capital gains tax, even though no money changes hands. This guide covers the mechanics, the four main reliefs (spouse exemption, Principal Private Residence relief, s165 holdover relief on business assets, s260 holdover on gifts to relevant property trusts), the IHT seven-year rule, and worked examples covering parent-to-child gifts, spousal transfers, partial gifts, and gifts of let property.

UK residents disposing of UK residential property where Capital Gains Tax is due must file a CGT on UK property return and pay the tax within 60 days of completion. The same gain must also appear on the Self Assessment return, where any balancing adjustment is reconciled by the following 31 January.

The UK CGT regime for residential property currently sits at 18% basic rate and 24% higher rate, with a £3,000 annual exempt amount and 60-day reporting via HMRC's online service. The confirmed change from 6 April 2027 is the new property income tax rates (22/42/47%), which affects landlords indirectly through disposal timing and the incorporation decision. This guide separates what's confirmed from what's speculated and sets out the planning levers that matter regardless of which scenario plays out.

Principal Private Residence Relief can significantly reduce CGT on your former home. Our step-by-step guide shows exactly how to calculate your exempt period and work out the relief.

From 30 October 2024 (Autumn Budget 2024), the headline CGT rate for individuals is 18 per cent and 24 per cent for both commercial and residential property under TCGA 1992 s.1H. The historic 10/20 per cent commercial differential is gone. The real differentiators now are the availability of Business Asset Disposal Relief on genuinely-trading commercial, the rollover relief trading-asset requirement, the capital-allowances clawback under TCGA s.41, the SIPP/SSAS commercial-property pension exemption, and the company-CT framework under CTA 2009 s.2(2A). This page reframes the comparison around those mechanics.

Finance (No. 2) Act 2023 rewrote the CGT position on divorce. Inter-spouse transfers stay no-gain no-loss for the tax year of separation under TCGA 1992 s.58(1), then for a further three tax years under s.58(1A) to (1C), and indefinitely under s.58(1D) where the disposal is made under a court order or formal separation agreement. The departing spouse can preserve Private Residence Relief on the former family home under s.225B. This page is the BTL-portfolio-aware divorce CGT guide, with two worked examples including a four-property staged split.

When a rental property passes through an estate, TCGA 1992 s.62 deems the personal representatives to acquire it at open-market value at the date of death. That probate value becomes the CGT base cost for everyone downstream. The two structural choices then dominate the bill: whether the personal representatives sell during administration at 24 per cent or assent to a beneficiary who may sell at 18 per cent, and how the £3,000 annual exempt amount is sequenced across the three tax years it is available.

Under TCGA 1992 s.222(5)(a) a single owner with two or more residences can nominate which one is treated as the main residence for Private Residence Relief. The nomination must be made within two years of first acquiring the second residence, and can be varied later for any period up to two years before the variation. This page covers the single-owner mechanic in detail, including the qualifying-residence test, the variation flag technique, the integrated deemed-occupation framework, and the post-April-2020 Lettings Relief restriction.

Capital Gains Tax on UK residential property for 2026/27 is charged at 18% on gains within the basic rate band and 24% on gains above it, under TCGA 1992 s.1H as substituted by Finance Act 2024. The same 18% / 24% rate structure applies uniformly to non-residential gains for individuals since 30 October 2024. Trustees and personal representatives pay 24% throughout. The annual exempt amount is £3,000 for 2026/27 (£1,500 for most trusts). This page walks through the rate structure with five worked planning examples, sets out where BADR and PRR change the position, and locates the rates within the wider 60-day reporting and Self Assessment framework.

The records you keep decide how much capital gains tax you pay when you sell a rental property. This guide sets out exactly what to save across purchase, improvement and sale, the real retention period under TMA 1970 s.12B (five years for landlords, not the six often quoted), how Making Tax Digital changes the form your records take, and how to rebuild a base cost when the paperwork has gone missing.

A worked, step-by-step method for calculating capital gains tax on a buy-to-let sale: working out the gain, the costs HMRC actually allows, how the 18% and 24% rates stack against your income, and the 60-day reporting trap.

Sell several properties in one tax year and the gains are pooled, you get a single £3,000 annual exempt amount, and the stack is taxed at 18% or 24% depending on where it sits against your income. Spreading disposals across tax years is usually the single biggest lever to reduce the bill.

Enhancement expenditure is the capital you spend improving a property that gets added to its base cost and cuts the gain on sale. The deduction lives at section 38 TCGA 1992, and the test that catches most landlords out is whether the work is still reflected in the property when you dispose of it. This guide sets out what qualifies, what does not, and how to evidence a claim.

When you sell a rental property in the UK you usually pay Capital Gains Tax at 18% (basic rate) or 24% (higher rate) on the gain above your £3,000 annual exemption, and you report and pay it within 60 days of completion.

A practical walkthrough of how a property capital gains tax calculator works: the 18% and 24% residential rates for 2026/27, the £3,000 annual exempt amount, which costs you can deduct, the 60-day reporting deadline, and a full worked example you can follow line by line.

Transfers of property between spouses or civil partners living together are no-gain no-loss disposals under TCGA 1992 s.58. The receiving spouse takes the original base cost, with CGT crystallising only on the eventual sale to a third party. What trips people up is not s.58 itself but the interactions around it: Form 17, the declaration of trust, the joint-tenancy bar, and the SDLT debt-assumption trap on mortgaged transfers. Divorce-specific transfers are covered separately.

Moving a rental property into your own company is a market-value disposal for CGT, so a gain crystallises even though no money changes hands. This guide shows the exact calculation, the 18% and 24% rates, and the two routes (Section 162 incorporation relief and holdover) that can defer the bill where you genuinely qualify.