The FHL regime is dead, DAC7 means HMRC already knows what your platform paid you, and quarterly MTD filings start April 2026 — short-let tax just got serious.. £495 one-time setup + £150/mo for full done-for-you compliance — software, quarterly submissions, year-end. ACMA CGMA qualified.
Get Your Free Readiness Check →No call required to start · 60-second form · Audience size in UK: ~65,000 UK short-let hosts cross £50K (London alone has 49,000+ active Airbnb listings; nationally the active host count is ~220,000 — top 30% clear the threshold once second-property and multi-listing portfolios are included)
UK Airbnb + short-let hosts are arguably the cohort facing the most aggressive tax-regime change of any group in MTD ITSA scope. Two seismic shifts hit simultaneously: (1) the 6 April 2025 abolition of the Furnished Holiday Let regime stripped away capital allowances and full mortgage-interest relief, aligning short-let income with standard residential property; (2) DAC7 reporting (mandatory since January 2024) means Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com all submit your earnings to HMRC directly — there is no possibility of under-declaration going unnoticed. On top of these, April 2026 MTD ITSA brings quarterly submissions for any host clearing £50K gross. Most short-let hosts are still running on pre-2025 mental models: they think their property is a "business" with capital allowances, and they don't realise their platform fees and cleaning costs need digital records categorised at the individual-transaction level from Q1 2026/27 onwards. The seasonal income pattern (coastal lets earn 70%+ of revenue in 4 months) also produces wildly uneven quarterly submissions that need narrative context HMRC currently has no formal way to capture.
These are different from a generic sole trader's. They're what catches uk airbnb + short-let hosts at year-end if MTD ITSA isn't set up properly.
The 6 April 2025 abolition of the Furnished Holiday Let regime fundamentally changed the tax treatment — capital allowances on furniture + fixtures are gone, full mortgage-interest relief is gone, and most hosts are still operating on the old assumptions.
DAC7 platform reporting (since January 2024) means Airbnb, Vrbo, and Booking.com now report your earnings directly to HMRC — the days of under-declaring and hoping are over, and HMRC reconciles platform reports against your submissions.
Short-let income is lumpy and seasonal — a coastal cottage might earn 70% of its annual income in May-September, creating quarterly submissions that look wildly different across Q1-Q4 and triggering HMRC enquiry flags if not explained.
Cleaning fees, platform service fees, and host fees (typically 14-20% of gross) are all expenses — but how they flow into MTD records depends on whether the platform invoices YOU for fees or deducts them from payouts (Airbnb deducts; Vrbo invoices). Mis-classification here is the #1 host bookkeeping error.
Hammock again — it's the only major UK MTD platform with native short-let + Airbnb support, handles per-listing income breakdown, automatically categorises Airbnb payouts (gross + fees) when bank feeds are connected, and supports the post-April-2025 standard property classification. Landlord Studio is a strong alternative if you want short-let-specific features like occupancy tracking + cleaner scheduling bundled with the MTD compliance. Avoid generic accounting software unless you also have non-property income — Xero/QuickBooks treat platform deposits as raw bank entries and require manual splitting of the Airbnb payout into gross income + service fee expense for every booking, which becomes unmanageable past 50-60 bookings a year.
3 questions. We email you a personal readiness report with what software to use, when you need it live, and what the flat-rate cost looks like for uk airbnb + short-let hosts.
Yes, but more subtly than before. Tax-wise, it's now standard property income (no more capital allowances, no more full mortgage-interest relief — just the 20% credit). But for MTD ITSA structuring, a former-FHL short-let business is typically still treated as a separate property business from your long-let portfolio because of the distinct expense profile (cleaning, platform fees, higher utilities, furniture replacement cycles). So if you have both long-lets and short-lets, expect two quarterly submissions per quarter — not one. We set this up with separate Hammock workspaces for the two businesses so the categorisations stay clean.
You record the GROSS booking value as income and the 14% Airbnb service fee as an expense — NOT just the net amount that hits your bank account. This matters because (a) it's how HMRC and platforms reconcile under DAC7 — they have the gross figure, and (b) your gross income is what counts toward the £50K MTD threshold. The platform fee is then a tax-deductible expense in the same quarter. Hammock auto-splits Airbnb payouts when connected via bank feed; without that, you're manually splitting every payout in two — a serious bookkeeping burden past ~20 bookings/year.
They'll look uneven but not "weird" — HMRC understands that holiday-let income is seasonal. Q1 (Apr-Jun) and Q2 (Jul-Sep) will show heavy income; Q3 (Oct-Dec) and Q4 (Jan-Mar) will show minimal income but ongoing expenses (insurance, mortgage interest, council tax). This pattern is normal and HMRC's systems are built to expect it. What CAN trigger an enquiry is inconsistent expense categorisation quarter-on-quarter — e.g. if you only record platform fees when income lands, your expense ratio looks artificially clean in low-income quarters. We always reconcile annual fees pro-rata across quarters during the Final Declaration for short-let clients.
Yes. The Plus tier includes all four quarterly submissions, the Final Declaration (with year-end adjustments rolled into it), monthly bookkeeping (up to 200 transactions/month), one VAT return per quarter if applicable, and 1-business-day email support. Covers up to two income sources — ample for most uk airbnb + short-let hosts.
Hammock again — it's the only major UK MTD platform with native short-let + Airbnb support is excellent software but it doesn't categorise transactions for you, doesn't catch errors, doesn't reconcile bank feeds intelligently, and doesn't tell you when you've crossed a tax threshold. We use the same software but with a CGMA-qualified human running the process. For uk airbnb + short-let hosts specifically, the difference is whether MTD ITSA becomes a Monday-morning admin task you can't avoid or something handled in the background.