Top Reasons to Consult a Landlord Accountant Before Adjusting Your Property Portfolio

Experienced landlords recognise that property taxation and accounting can be complex and demanding, with myriad considerations, from selecting the optimal trading structure, accounting for capital gains tax, declaring varied rental incomes, storing tenant deposits and reporting profits for tax purposes.

Whether you own and rent out commercial properties, have turned your previous main residence into a rental home, have an expansive property portfolio, or own several furnished holiday lets, an experienced landlord accountant can provide invaluable support, guidance and assistance.

There is no bad time to seek professional accounting services, but if you plan to sell a portfolio asset, purchase a new premise, property, or plot of land, or invest in a house of multiple occupation (HMO), we strongly recommend discussing your plans with our landlord accountants to ensure you make informed, clear, and well-managed decisions.

What Areas Can Landlord Accounting Services Help With?

As a long-established and reputable team of commercial accounting and financial advisory experts, James Todd & Co’s property specialists have years of expertise supporting landlords and have in-depth knowledge of the property market, current and forthcoming legislative changes, and the challenges landlords face due to shifting demand and external pressures.

It’s important to clarify that while we refer to experts in property rental businesses as landlord accountants, this isn’t a technical term. Instead, all our accountancy advisers, consultants, and tax specialists are fully accredited, qualified professionals with a broad spectrum of skills and proficiencies across the fields of tax management, business mentoring, regulatory compliance, and financial reporting.

There are multiple potential areas in which you may find landlord accounting assistance incredibly useful, including:

• Calculating tax liabilities, including capital gains tax, self-assessment income tax and corporation tax, depending on your trading structure.
• Managing property tax obligations, such as Stamp Duty Land Tax, and verifying that you meet the qualifying conditions for exemptions or tax reliefs.
• Creating fully compliant, on-time reporting and assistance with transitioning to updated software and bookkeeping systems in line with Making Tax Digital requirements.
• Evaluating the profitability, sustainability, and value of your property assets, as well as using regular reporting and assessments to identify new opportunities or emerging risks.

We also provide additional services, depending on your requirements, such as outsourced bookkeeping, which is ideal for landlords who find data entry time-consuming, preparing VAT returns each quarter, and offering insights and cost comparisons when making decisions about selling property.

How Is a Specialist Landlord Accountant Better Able to Assist Property Businesses and Professionals?

Financial accounting and business management are about more than preparing year-end reports, filing tax returns, and declaring property sales. We work with our clients over the long term, understanding their aspirations and key goals and offering support, analytics and independent guidance when comparing opportunities or looking at viable ways to scale a business.

Industry-Specific Expertise

A key advantage of working with knowledgeable property accountants is our experience in working with businesses in the sector, from buy-to-let landlords to new property owners and limited companies.

Assistance may be essential in areas like registering and setting up your company, getting to grips with HM Revenue and Customs and Companies House reporting requirements, and creating internal controls, bookkeeping processes and robust cash flow management policies.

As your business grows, we remain on hand to help with challenges as they crop up and can often provide swift answers to questions or queries. This helps you save time, allow you to focus on your business, and avoid unnecessary expenditures, tax obligations, or hidden charges.

Remaining Compliant

Property laws and reforms have made significant changes to the sector in recent years, and it is key that all buy-to-let landlords understand the impacts, stay compliant with key requirements and mandatory reporting expectations, and know how and why some changes will affect their profit margins or the viability of their current plans.

Our accounting teams provide a comprehensive range of general accountancy services. We take the pressure and stress of management accounting, tax planning, year-end accounts preparation and VAT return calculations away, ensuring you have accurate, real-time records and reports to inform your decision-making.

Assistance With Accounting Software

While thousands of businesses have switched to MTD-compatible bookkeeping software, many have yet to do so and become stuck when trying to file accounts or declarations online or when they discover that their software cannot integrate with the ever-increasing number of submission processes that need to be MTD compliant.

Bookkeeping software can also be used to automate some of the administrative processes posed by a manually kept system, such as repeating invoices, customer statements and payment reminders. It can also easily keep landlords up to date with missed payments, to avoid rent arrears accruing without notice.

Regular management accounting and quarterly reviews can assist, alongside autonomous advice about the best software solutions. This way, you can avoid investing more than necessary or making impulsive purchases under pressure without knowing whether they offer good value for your business.

Optimising Tax Deductible Expenses

Although the rules around self-assessment income tax submissions have changed for private landlords, countless businesses continue to omit deductible, eligible expenses from their financial reporting when declaring profits subject to tax – and, in doing so, vastly increase their tax liabilities.

We ensure you use tax planning opportunities wisely and know how the accounting treatment of transactions will impact the amount of tax you pay while handling all entries correctly.

That often means reviewing utilities, service charges paid to letting agents, general property repairs and maintenance, some aspects of mortgage interest or other financing costs, landlord’s insurance, accountancy fees and employment costs.

Another area of tax-related advice is around capital gains tax, where experienced landlord accountants will help calculate the accurate tax liability that will arise and compare that cost with the profits you expect to make on the sale, and how this will impact the other properties within your portfolio.

Learn More About Specialist Landlord Accountancy Services

We’ve covered just a snapshot of how experienced landlord accountants can assist; you’ll find more details about our expansive range of client service options through the James Todd & Co website, along with outlines of other high-demand accounting, bookkeeping, tax management and mentoring services.

If you’d like to discuss your tax position, property business or plans to purchase more properties in the current market and climate, you are welcome to contact James Todd & Co.

Our role is to provide the knowledge, insight and advice you need to maximise the success of your business and to contribute to astute decision-making, business planning and strategic acquisitions and sales – giving you full control over your financial affairs.