Landlord Expenses: The Complete Checklist of What You Can Claim

Every year we see landlords pay more tax than they need to — not through clever planning gone wrong, but simply because allowable expenses never made it onto the tax return. The rule is straightforward: an expense is deductible if it's incurred wholly and exclusively for your property rental business and it's revenue (day-to-day) rather than capital (improving or acquiring the asset) in nature. What follows is the checklist we'd want every landlord to run through before filing.

1. Mortgage interest and finance costs — via the 20% tax credit

Interest on a mortgage or loan used for your residential lettings is no longer deducted from rental profits. Instead, you get a basic-rate (20%) tax credit on your finance costs — interest, arrangement fees, and interest on loans to buy furnishings. The credit is capped at 20% of the lowest of: your finance costs, your property profits, or your adjusted total income (broadly, total income above the personal allowance, excluding savings and dividend income). Unused amounts carry forward.

Two things people miss: mortgage arrangement and broker fees count as finance costs too, and if you remortgaged your own home to fund a deposit on a rental, the interest on that borrowing can qualify (up to the value of the property when first let). Note the restriction applies to residential lets — interest on commercial property is still deductible in full.

2. Repairs and maintenance — and the capital/revenue line

Repairs are deductible; improvements are not. The test is whether you're restoring the property to its previous condition or enhancing it:

• Revenue (claim it): repainting and redecorating, fixing a leaking roof, replacing broken tiles or guttering, repairing a boiler, re-pointing, damp treatment, replacing a rotten window frame.
• Like-for-like replacement counts as a repair — even using the modern equivalent. Replacing single glazing with standard double glazing, or an old boiler with a modern condensing one, is a repair in HMRC's eyes.
• Capital (don't claim against rent): extensions, loft conversions, adding a bathroom, upgrading to a significantly higher spec. These are added to your base cost and relieved against capital gains tax when you sell — so keep the invoices either way.

Watch the trap on newly bought properties: if the property wasn't in a lettable state when you acquired it and the price reflected that, the initial refurbishment is usually capital.

3. Replacement of domestic items relief

For furnished and part-furnished lets you can claim the cost of replacing furniture, appliances, carpets, curtains, crockery and white goods — like-for-like (any element of upgrade is excluded), less anything you got for the old item. The initial purchase of items for a new let doesn't qualify; only replacements do.

4. Letting agent and management fees

All deductible: full management fees, tenant-find fees, rent collection, inventory and check-in/check-out reports, deposit protection charges, and renewal fees. If your agent deducts fees before paying rent over, remember to gross up — declare the full rent and claim the fees, don't just declare the net receipt.

5. Mileage — one of the most under-claimed of all

You can use HMRC's approved mileage rates — 55p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles, 25p thereafter (2026/27) — for journeys made wholly and exclusively for the rental business: property inspections, trips to carry out repairs, visits to the letting agent, and runs to the DIY store for materials. Keep a simple log of date, destination and purpose. Travel to view potential new properties to buy is capital, and ordinary commuting rules still apply if you have another business base.

6. Insurance

Landlord buildings insurance, landlord contents insurance (for items you provide), rent guarantee insurance, landlord liability cover and legal expenses insurance are all deductible in full.

7. Service charges and ground rent

For leasehold flats, the service charge and ground rent you pay as landlord are allowable. One caveat: if a service charge demand includes contributions to major works of an improvement nature — a new roof structure, say, rather than repairs — that element may be capital, so ask the managing agent for the breakdown on large one-off demands.

8. Professional fees

• Allowable: accountancy fees for the rental accounts and tax return pages, legal costs of evicting a tenant or recovering rent arrears, debt collection, and legal costs of renewing a tenancy agreement for less than 50 years.
• Capital: legal and professional fees on buying or selling the property, and fees connected with the first letting where the lease exceeds a year.

9. Training, books and subscriptions

Often missed, and worth claiming with care. If you're already running a rental business, costs of keeping your knowledge up to date are allowable: landlord association memberships (such as the NRLA), subscriptions to landlord publications, reference books on tenancy law and regulation, and short courses updating you on existing obligations — deposit rules, safety regulations, Making Tax Digital.

What doesn't qualify: courses that teach you a new skill or how to get into property in the first place — expensive "property investment" seminars are the classic example. HMRC treats those as capital or simply not wholly and exclusively for the existing business.

10. The rest of the checklist

• Advertising for tenants, listing fees and photography;
• Safety compliance: gas safety certificates, electrical inspections (EICR), energy performance certificates, replacement smoke and CO alarms, legionella assessments;
• Utilities and council tax during void periods between tenancies, and any bills you pay under the tenancy;
• Cleaning and gardening, end-of-tenancy cleans, window cleaning;
• Office and admin costs: phone calls, landlord software, stationery, postage, and a reasonable proportion of home office costs for managing the portfolio;
• Bank charges on a dedicated rental account.

Lease extensions: revenue or capital?

With so many leaseholders now extending, this question comes up constantly — and the answer disappoints: a lease extension is capital expenditure. The premium you pay the freeholder, and the associated legal and valuation fees, are treated as the cost of acquiring a new, longer asset. None of it is deductible against your rental income.

It isn't wasted, though: the whole cost — premium plus professional fees — is added to your capital gains tax base cost and reduces the taxable gain when you eventually sell. Keep every invoice. And don't confuse this with the allowable cost of renewing a short tenancy agreement with your tenant — that exception doesn't extend to extending your own lease with the freeholder.

Two final points

If your total property income is under £1,000 you can use the property allowance instead of claiming expenses — and for modest expenses you can claim the £1,000 allowance in place of actual costs where that gives a better answer. And remember you can't claim for your own time: doing the repairs yourself saves money, but your labour isn't a deductible expense — only the materials are.

Let us check your claim

We prepare rental accounts and self-assessment returns for landlords across Kent and the UK, and a proper expenses review is part of the job — it's common for us to find several hundred pounds of missed claims in a first-year review. If you'd like us to look over yours before the filing deadline, book a free consultation.