CHECKLIST
Selling a Rental Property Checklist
About fifty five minutes, and the sixty day clock starts at completion whether or not you have looked at this. Capital gains tax on UK residential property has its own return, its own account and its own deadline, and none of them wait for your tax return in January.
- Five sections, eighteen checks, fifty five minutes
- The base cost, built line by line from paperwork you still need to find
- The reliefs people miss, and the timing that moves the rate
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Who this checklist is for
Landlords selling a rental property who want the gain worked out properly, the reliefs claimed rather than discovered afterwards, and the sixty day return filed without the account setup eating the deadline.
You are about to put it on the market
Start the paperwork hunt now, not at completion. The purchase completion statement carries the price and the buying costs that start your base cost, and every improvement invoice adds to it. This is also the moment to check the timing: the gain sits on top of your income for the year, so completing in a low income year can move part of it from 24 per cent to 18.
You spent years improving it and deducted as you went
Then be careful which spend goes where. Improvements add to the base cost. Repairs came off the rent at the time, and claiming them again on the sale is claiming the same money twice, which is the commonest error in a property gain. If you ever lived in it, private residence relief covers that period plus the final nine months.
You think you will sort the tax out with the January return
The return and the payment are both due within sixty days of completion, through a Capital Gains Tax on UK Property account that is separate from Self Assessment and takes time to set up. The sixty day return is provisional and the annual return finalises it, but neither waits for the other.
FACTS
Sixty days, and the exemption is now £3,000
The annual exempt amount was £12,300 in 2022/23, so a calculation you did a few years ago understates the bill by thousands. Residential rates are 18 per cent on any part of the gain that fits your unused basic rate band and 24 per cent above it.
18 checks
Five sections
60 days
From completion, for the return and the payment
FACTS
Two reliefs worth checking before exchange
Transfers between spouses are at no gain no loss, so a share moved before the sale can use a second £3,000 exemption and a second basic rate band, provided it is genuine and done before exchange. And capital losses from earlier disposals carry forward indefinitely if they were claimed within four years, so an old bad investment can shelter this gain.