How to declare Airbnb income on Self Assessment

Short-let profits go on the UK property pages of a Self Assessment return, form SA105, filed alongside the main SA100. If you have not sent a return before, register by 5 October after the tax year the income started. File online and pay by 31 January.

For the 2025-26 tax year that deadline is 31 January 2027, and that return matters more than the four before it. The furnished holiday lettings regime ended on 6 April 2025, so 2025-26 is the first full year most holiday lets are taxed under standard property rules. Four things changed, and two of them are easy to miss until the bill arrives.

Where Airbnb income goes on a Self Assessment return

Everything below runs on one set of dates.

• The 2025-26 tax year ran from 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026.
• Register by 5 October following the tax year you first had rental income, if you do not usually send a return. For 2025-26 that date has passed; register now if you have not.
• File online and pay by 31 January. For 2025-26, 31 January 2027. Paper returns are due by 31 October.
• A second payment may fall due on 31 July, covered below.

The income itself goes on SA105, the UK property supplementary page, which covers rental income and other receipts from UK land and property including furnished holiday accommodation. It attaches to the SA100 main return. This page does not walk through box numbers; HMRC publishes notes alongside each year’s form and they are the thing to read with the form open in front of you.

Whether you have to file at all

Two separate questions hide inside this one. The first is whether you have to tell HMRC anything. The second is whether you have to send a return.

The first £1,000 of property income is covered by the property allowance. Below that, in most cases there is nothing to report.

Above it, GOV.UK draws the line in two places:

• Between £1,000 and £2,500, contact HMRC.
• You must send a Self Assessment return if your rental income is more than £2,500 after allowable expenses, or more than £10,000 before them.

That second threshold catches a surprising number of holiday lets, because gross takings on a cottage reach £10,000 long before the profit does. A property grossing £12,000 and spending £10,000 on changeovers, consumables, insurance and repairs has a £2,000 profit, which is under the £2,500 test and over the £10,000 one. The gross figure alone puts it inside Self Assessment.

The catch in the property allowance

The allowance works as an alternative to deducting expenses, so you claim one or the other and pick whichever leaves you better off. There is a condition attached that decides whether you can use it at all:

You cannot claim the property allowance if you also claim the tax reducer for finance costs such as mortgage interest. It also cannot be applied to income you are putting through the Rent a Room scheme.

Read that against the next section and the problem shows itself. A mortgaged holiday let is exactly the property whose owner now claims the finance cost reducer, and claiming it closes the allowance off.

One more thing worth saying plainly: Rent a Room does not cover a whole-property holiday let. The £7,500 allowance is for letting furnished space inside your own main home, and the setup guide covers where that line falls.

What the end of furnished holiday lettings changed

“Furnished holiday letting” was a real HMRC category with its own rules for around forty years. It was abolished for income tax and capital gains tax from 6 April 2025, and for corporation tax from 1 April 2025. What your property counts as for the other tests, and the night-count rules that still decide your rates bill, belong to what your property counts as.

Four changes land on the return itself.

1. Mortgage interest stopped being a deduction. The finance cost restriction now applies, so loan interest is relieved at the basic rate rather than taken off your profit. The arithmetic is below.

2. Capital allowances went, and replacement of domestic items relief arrived. New expenditure no longer qualifies for the more generous capital allowances treatment; instead you get the relief other property businesses get when you replace a domestic item like a sofa, a bed or a washing machine. Where a business already had a capital allowances pool running, it can continue claiming writing-down allowances on that pool.

3. The capital gains reliefs for trading business assets went. Access to those reliefs was withdrawn, with narrow transitional exceptions for disposals meeting specific criteria.

4. The income stopped counting as relevant UK earnings for pension relief. That changes the maximum pension contribution some owners can get relief on, and for anyone who had been using holiday-let profits to support contributions it is worth raising with whoever handles the pension.

The mortgage interest change, worked through

The relief is now capped at the basic rate whatever rate you pay, so the owners who notice are the ones whose other income puts them above it. A geared property that looked viable on the old treatment is worth re-modelling on the new one.

If you own it with someone else

This is the change most likely to cost a couple money on the 2025-26 return.

Income from property held jointly by married couples and civil partners is split 50/50 by default, whatever the actual ownership shares. Furnished holiday lettings used to be an exception: up to 5 April 2025 the 50/50 rule did not apply to the commercial letting of furnished holiday accommodation, so profits could follow the real entitlement. That exception was withdrawn from 6 April 2025 and the 50/50 default now applies.

If the beneficial interests genuinely are unequal, a Form 17 declaration overrides the 50/50 rule and taxes each of you on your actual entitlement. Two conditions matter: it has to be made jointly by both of you, and it has to reflect real unequal beneficial ownership rather than a preferred allocation. Where one spouse declines, both are back on 50/50.

Couples who had been routing profit toward the lower earner should look at this before filing, because the 2025-26 return is the first one where the old flexibility is gone.

The payment that catches people out

The 31 January bill often arrives larger than expected, because it can carry two things at once: the balance for the year just filed, and the first instalment toward the next one.

Payments on account are advance payments toward your next bill, due 31 January and 31 July, each usually half of the tax you owed the previous year. You are outside them if either of these is true:

• the tax you owed last year was less than £1,000, or
• more than 80% of the tax you owed last year was paid outside Self Assessment, for example through PAYE on a salary.

An owner whose first good year pushes their Self Assessment bill past £1,000 can therefore face roughly one and a half years of tax in a single January. It is a cash-flow event rather than a tax increase, and it is predictable a year ahead.

When Making Tax Digital starts for you

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax replaces the annual return with digital records and quarterly updates. It arrives in three waves, decided by qualifying income:

• £50,000 and above: from 6 April 2026, tested on 2024-25 qualifying income.
• £30,000 and above: from 6 April 2027, tested on 2025-26 qualifying income.
• £20,000 and above: from 6 April 2028, tested on 2026-27 qualifying income.

Property income counts toward it. And here is the part that changes who is affected:

So the return you file by 31 January 2027 is the one that decides whether you are inside Making Tax Digital from April 2027. A single cottage taking £30,000 across a year is an ordinary cottage, and on the measure that counts it is over the line.

If you miss the deadline

Stated once, because it is simple and worth knowing before January rather than after.

Late filing starts at a £100 penalty. After three months it becomes £10 a day up to £900. At six months a further 5% of the tax due or £300, whichever is greater, and the same again at twelve months. Late payment carries 5% of the unpaid tax at 30 days, six months and twelve months, with interest running on top.

What Airbnb already told HMRC

Booking platforms have reported host information to HMRC since the rules started on 1 January 2024, with the first reports covering 2024 and due by 31 January 2025. If you let property, the report includes the address of each property on the platform. The platform must give you a copy of what it sent.

Two details make that copy worth asking for.

It reports calendar years, from 1 January to 31 December, while your return covers a tax year to 5 April. The two never line up, so the figure HMRC holds will not match the figure on your return, and that is expected rather than a problem.

It also reports earnings after platform fees and commissions. A return built from the money that landed in your bank account has quietly dropped the fees out of both sides of the sum. The cleaner approach is to record gross rents and claim the platform’s fees as an expense, which gives you the same profit and a figure that reconciles.

Where this leaves you

Register if you have not, file on the UK property pages, and treat the 2025-26 return as the one worth getting a professional eye over. Three things specifically: whether the property allowance or your actual expenses leaves you better off now that the mortgage interest reducer sits in the way, how the 50/50 rule affects a jointly-owned property, and whether your gross takings put you inside Making Tax Digital from April 2027.

None of the above is advice on your own position, and a holiday let is one of the few property types where an hour with an accountant reliably pays for itself.

Where this connects to the running of the property: the profit figure on that return is decided months earlier, by what the property charged and how many nights it sold. If you want that side modelled before you commit, a free Airbnb valuation gives a realistic annual range for your actual address with the assumptions written down. If the numbers work and you would rather not run it yourself, full management is how we take it on.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to declare Airbnb income under £1,000?

The first £1,000 of property income is covered by the property allowance, and in most cases there is nothing to report below it. Above £1,000 and up to £2,500, contact HMRC. Beyond that you are into Self Assessment on the thresholds above. Note the allowance applies to income from property generally rather than per property, so two small lets are added together.

Which pages of the tax return does Airbnb income go on?

The UK property pages, form SA105, filed with the SA100 main return. That is the page for rental income and other receipts from UK land and property, including furnished holiday accommodation. HMRC publishes notes for each tax year’s form, and they are the thing to read alongside it.

Can my husband and I split the income however we like?

Not since 6 April 2025. Income from jointly held property is split 50/50 between spouses and civil partners by default, and the exception that used to let furnished holiday lettings follow actual entitlement was withdrawn. A Form 17 declaration can override the 50/50 rule where the beneficial interests genuinely are unequal, and it has to be made by both of you.

Does Airbnb tell HMRC what I earned?

Yes. Platforms have reported host details and earnings to HMRC since 1 January 2024, including the address of each property let, and they must give you a copy of what they sent. The copy covers calendar years and reports earnings after platform fees, so it will not match your tax-year return. Record gross rents and claim the fees as an expense.

Sources

Every source below was read at GOV.UK or in an HMRC manual on 2 October 2026.

• GOV.UK: Renting out a property: paying tax (the £1,000 property allowance, the £2,500 after expenses and £10,000 before expenses thresholds, and the 5 October registration deadline)
• GOV.UK: Tax-free allowances on property and trading income (the property allowance, and that it cannot be claimed alongside the finance cost tax reducer or applied to Rent a Room income)
• HMRC: Abolition of the furnished holiday lettings tax regime (policy paper updated 7 November 2024: the finance cost restriction, capital allowances and replacement of domestic items relief, the chargeable gains reliefs, and relevant UK earnings for pension relief)
• HMRC Trusts, Settlements and Estates Manual: TSEM9820 (the furnished holiday lettings exception to the 50/50 rule up to 5 April 2025, and its withdrawal) and TSEM9842 (the 50/50 default and what a Form 17 declaration does)
• GOV.UK: Self Assessment: UK property (SA105) (the form and its notes, 2025 to 2026 published; page updated 6 April 2026)
• GOV.UK: Understand your Self Assessment tax bill: payments on account (the two dates, the half-of-last-year calculation, and the under £1,000 and 80% exceptions)
• GOV.UK: Self Assessment tax returns: penalties (the late filing and late payment ladders)
• GOV.UK: Find out if and when you need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (the £50,000, £30,000 and £20,000 thresholds with their start dates and the tax year tested; page updated 26 March 2026) and Work out your qualifying income (qualifying income is the amount before expenses, taken from the previous year’s return; page updated 11 September 2026)
• GOV.UK: Selling goods or services on a digital platform (platform reporting from 1 January 2024, the property address requirement, and your right to a copy)
• The arithmetic in both figures is illustrative and is stated as such on the page.