SHERIDAN, WYOMING -- August 14, 2026 -- HM Revenue and Customs has released a new statistical dataset detailing income and expenses reported by individual landlords through Income Tax Self-Assessment returns. The publication spans five tax years, from 2020 to 2021 through 2024 to 2025, offering a multi-year view of how sole traders and individual property owners report rental earnings. The dataset excludes incorporated landlords, who file separately under corporation tax rules rather than through ITSA. For property professionals and tax advisors serving the private rental sector, the release adds a new reference point for tracking reporting trends among unincorporated landlords.
Scope Limited To Individual Filers
The data draws exclusively from ITSA submissions, meaning it captures only individuals and partnerships who declare rental income as part of their personal tax returns. Companies that hold rental property and report through corporation tax channels fall outside this release entirely. Given the growing number of landlords who have incorporated portfolios in recent years, partly in response to changes in mortgage interest relief, this exclusion is a meaningful boundary for anyone trying to gauge the full scale of UK rental income.
Property advisors working with clients who hold mixed portfolios, some incorporated and some held personally, will need to look elsewhere for a complete financial picture. This dataset speaks only to the personal-ownership side of the market.
Five-Year Span Enables Trend Analysis
Covering five consecutive tax years allows analysts to observe how reported income and expenses have shifted over a period that included pandemic-era disruption, interest rate volatility, and evolving tax treatment for landlords. Researchers, lenders, and trade bodies that track buy-to-let sector health often rely on HMRC data precisely because it reflects actual filed returns rather than survey estimates or self-reported industry sentiment.
For firms advising landlord clients, having consistent multi-year figures from a single regulatory source can support more grounded conversations about deduction patterns, cost pressures, and reporting consistency across the sector, though the dataset does not itself draw conclusions about causes behind any shifts.
What The Data Does Not Cover
HMRC has been explicit about the boundaries of this release. It contains no information about tenants occupying rented properties, meaning there is no visibility into occupancy patterns, tenancy duration, or renter demographics from this source. Firms seeking tenant-side insights will need to consult separate housing or tenancy datasets.
The publication also excludes income arising from buying and selling property. Capital gains, disposal proceeds, and transaction-related earnings sit outside its remit, which is confined strictly to rental income and associated expenses as declared on Self-Assessment forms. This distinction matters for tax practitioners who need to separate rental yield analysis from capital transaction reporting when advising clients or structuring portfolio reviews.
Relevance For Advisors And Portfolio Managers
Accountants, letting agents, and property management firms that rely on regulatory statistics to benchmark client performance against sector-wide patterns now have an additional five-year reference point. Because the data originates from actual tax filings rather than voluntary surveys, it carries a level of reliability that supports its use in client reporting, market commentary, or internal benchmarking exercises.
That said, the exclusion of incorporated landlords means any benchmarking exercise using this dataset should be framed carefully. Portfolio managers overseeing corporate-held rental assets should not extrapolate findings from this release onto their own holdings without accounting for the structural difference in how income is reported and taxed.
Implications For Tax Compliance Planning
For advisory firms preparing clients for future Self-Assessment cycles, having a clear five-year baseline of declared rental income and expenses can inform discussions about typical deduction categories and reporting norms. This is particularly relevant as HMRC continues to expand its use of data-driven compliance checks across the rental sector.
Landlords and their representatives should treat this publication as a statistical backdrop rather than a compliance tool in itself. It does not provide guidance on allowable expenses or filing requirements, but its consistent five-year format may prove useful when preparing sector commentary or client briefings ahead of future filing deadlines.
A Narrow But Useful Dataset
The release is deliberately bounded in scope, focusing solely on rental income and expense figures from individual ITSA filers. Trade bodies representing landlords, tax professionals, and property management firms will likely find its greatest value in trend tracking across the five covered years rather than in drawing broader conclusions about the wider rental or property transaction market.
As HMRC continues to refine and expand its statistical publications, industry stakeholders should expect further releases that may eventually bridge some of the current gaps, particularly around incorporated landlord reporting or tenant-side data, though no such expansion has been indicated alongside this release.
Read more at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs.