Rental Property Expenses You Can Claim: The Complete Landlord Checklist

Most landlords under-claim. Not because they are reckless, and not because they are trying to be careful with the taxman. They under-claim because the £14 trip to the hardware shop, the £63 of mileage doing inspections, and the £78 electricity bill during a void month never got written down anywhere.

None of those are big numbers. Added together across a year and across a few properties, they are the difference between a tax bill you resent and one you understand. In the sample portfolio we use in our own spreadsheet, five properties generated 10,958 in costs across a year — of which 7,558 was deductible. Miss a third of that and you are paying tax on money you never kept.

This is the full checklist. It is general information rather than tax advice, and the rules differ by country — we flag the big divergences as we go.

The one rule that decides every borderline case

Before the list, learn this distinction, because it settles roughly nine out of ten arguments landlords have with themselves:

• Revenue expense — the cost of keeping the property in the condition you bought it in. Deduct it against this year's rental income.
• Capital expense — the cost of improving the property beyond that condition. Not deductible against rental income. It adjusts your cost base and reduces capital gains tax when you eventually sell.

Same money, same bank account, completely different tax treatment. Get this wrong in either direction and you either overpay now or get an unwelcome letter later.

What you can claim

1. Repairs and maintenance

The biggest category for most landlords. Boiler servicing, replacing a broken extractor fan, fixing a leak, gutter clearing, repainting between tenancies, damp treatment, replacing a cracked window.

The test is restoration, not upgrade. Repainting a tired hallway the same colour is a repair. Knocking the hallway through into the living room is not.

2. Insurance

Landlord buildings insurance, contents cover on a furnished let, rent guarantee insurance, public liability. All deductible in the year the premium relates to.

3. Letting agent and management fees

Ongoing management commission, usually 8–12% of rent. Fully deductible. If you self-manage you claim nothing here, which is worth remembering when you compare your net yield against someone who uses an agent.

4. Letting and advertising costs

Tenant-find fees, portal listings, photography, the cost of advertising a vacant unit. Note that a tenant-find fee is treated differently from ongoing management in some jurisdictions when the tenancy is long — worth a question to your accountant if the figure is large.

5. Legal and professional fees

Tenancy agreement drafting and renewals, accountancy fees for preparing your rental accounts, eviction proceedings, arbitration.

Important exception: the legal costs of buying the property are capital, not revenue. Conveyancing on purchase goes into your cost base. Conveyancing on a tenancy dispute is deductible now.

6. Utilities and council tax during void periods

When a property sits empty between tenancies, the electricity, gas, water and council tax fall to you — and they are deductible. This is one of the most commonly missed categories, precisely because a void month is the month you least want to think about the property.

7. Service charges and ground rent

For leasehold flats, both are deductible. Block service charges are often billed half-yearly, which makes them easy to forget when you reconstruct the year from memory in January.

8. Travel and mileage

Journeys made wholly for the rental business — inspections, meeting contractors, collecting keys. Most landlords either forget this entirely or over-claim by including the trip where they also did the weekly shop.

Keep a simple log: date, purpose, miles. In the sample portfolio, 140 miles of inspections came to 63. Small, but it is genuinely yours.

9. Replacing furnishings in a furnished let

Replacing an existing sofa, bed, carpet or white good on a like-for-like basis is generally allowable. Buying those items for the first time, to furnish a previously unfurnished property, usually is not — that is capital.

10. Phone, software and admin

The proportion of your phone bill, accounting software, and yes, spreadsheets and tools bought specifically to run the rental business.

Mortgage interest: the one that needs its own section

This is where landlords get caught out, because the treatment changed and varies sharply by country.

In the UK, individual landlords can no longer deduct mortgage interest from rental income. Since the Section 24 changes fully bit in 2020, you instead receive a basic-rate (20%) tax credit on the interest. For a higher-rate taxpayer this is materially worse than the old deduction, and it is the single biggest reason some leveraged portfolios that look profitable are not. Properties held in a limited company are treated differently.

In the US, mortgage interest on a rental property remains a deductible expense on Schedule E.

Whichever applies to you, track the interest separately from the capital repayment. Your monthly mortgage payment is not an expense — only the interest portion has any claim to be. On a 135,000 loan at 5.5% over 25 years, the monthly payment is 829.02, but only 618.75 of the first payment is interest. The other 210.27 is you buying your own house back. Deducting the whole 829.02 is simply wrong, and it is an easy mistake to make from a bank statement.

What you cannot claim

• Capital improvements — new bathroom suite where there wasn't one, extensions, loft conversions, new kitchen that is a clear upgrade rather than a replacement.
• The capital portion of mortgage payments — as above.
• Purchase costs — stamp duty, purchase conveyancing, survey fees. These go into your cost base for capital gains.
• Your own labour — the weekend you spent painting has real value, but you cannot invoice yourself for it.
• Personal use — any portion of a cost that relates to your own occupation or personal travel.

The repair-versus-improvement line, with examples

That fifth row surprises people. Where a like-for-like replacement is no longer available, the modern equivalent normally still counts as a repair rather than an improvement.

What records you actually need

For each cost, four things: the date, the property, the category, and the amount — plus the receipt. That is it. The reason most landlords fail at this is not that it is hard, but that they try to reconstruct twelve months of it in one sitting the week before a deadline.

Log costs as they happen, tagged to the right property, and the year-end job becomes reading a total off a page rather than an archaeology project.

The mistake that costs the most

It is not a dramatic one. It is that landlords track the big obvious items — the agent's commission, the insurance renewal — and quietly lose the long tail. The 85 gutter clearing. The 78 void-period electricity. The 63 of mileage. The 142 of council tax on an empty flat.

None of those feel worth opening a spreadsheet for. Together, across a five-property portfolio, they were over 400 in a single year in our sample data — money that was spent, was deductible, and would simply have evaporated if nobody wrote it down.

Frequently asked questions

Can I claim expenses from before the first tenant moved in?

Often yes, if they were incurred wholly for the rental business and the property was genuinely available to let. Pre-letting expenditure rules vary — this is a good one to confirm with an accountant rather than guess.

Do I need receipts for everything?

Yes, assume so. A bank statement shows that money left; it does not show what it bought or which property it related to. Photograph receipts the day you get them.

What if a cost covers two properties?

Apportion it on a reasonable, consistent basis and write down the basis you used. Splitting a 400 insurance policy across two flats as 200 each is fine if that reflects reality.

Can I claim a spreadsheet or software I bought to manage the properties?

Generally yes — tools bought specifically to run the rental business are a normal business expense.

Put it into practice

Knowing the list is the easy half. Capturing every item across a whole year, tagged to the right property and the right category, is the half that actually saves money.

Our Rental Property Tracker has an Expenses tab with all thirteen categories built in as drop-downs, a deductible yes/no flag on every row, and a Tax Summary that nets rent received against deductible costs per property — with mortgage interest kept on its own line precisely because of the complication above.

If you are not ready for that, read our guide on how to calculate rental yield, which shows why the costs on this page are what separate a 9.3% headline from a 6.8% reality.

This article is general information for landlords, not tax advice, and does not account for your personal circumstances. Tax treatment of rental expenses differs between countries and changes over time — mortgage interest relief in particular. Confirm your position with a qualified accountant before filing.