Updated May 2026. Written by Tax Dispute Consultants, specialist ex-HMRC tax investigation team. Read time: 10 minutes.

HMRC’s Let Property Campaign has been running since 2013. If you have undeclared rental income from residential property, this is the most straightforward route to putting things right, but only if you do it correctly. A poorly prepared LPC disclosure can leave you worse off than if you had used a specialist from the start.

What is the Let Property Campaign?

The Let Property Campaign (LPC) is a formal HMRC disclosure programme for individuals who have failed to declare rental income from UK residential property. Launched in September 2013, the campaign remains open and active. It offers qualifying landlords a structured route to disclose underpaid tax, pay what is owed (including interest) and settle for a reduced penalty compared to what would result from a tax investigation triggered by HMRC.

The campaign covers income tax on net rental profits. It also encompasses related capital gains tax liabilities on property disposals and, in some cases, High Income Child Benefit Charge adjustments where rental income affects the overall income calculation.

The LPC is specifically for residential property income. Commercial landlords, companies and trusts cannot use this route, though voluntary disclosure options exist for them separately.

Still relevant in 2026: Some landlords assume the LPC is a short-term amnesty that has now closed. It has not. HMRC continues to accept LPC disclosures and continues to use the campaign as the benchmark for assessing co-operation in residential landlord enquiries. If you use the LPC before HMRC contacts you, your disclosure is “unprompted”, the most favourable category for penalty purposes.

Who the LPC targets

The LPC is aimed at residential landlords who are “resident in the UK” and have failed to declare income from letting one or more residential properties. The campaign covers:

  • Standard buy-to-let properties let on assured shorthold tenancies
  • Rooms let within your own home (above the Rent-a-Room Scheme threshold of £7,500 per year)
  • Holiday lets (now taxed as standard residential property following the abolition of the FHL regime in April 2025)
  • Properties let informally to family or friends below market rent (where tax may still be due on the actual rent received)
  • Inherited properties that have been let without being declared
  • Properties that were briefly let during a period of overseas employment or relocation

Non-resident landlords with UK rental income should also consider disclosure, though the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme creates additional complications. See our main rental property investigation guide for details of the NRL scheme.

The disclosure process: step by step

Step 1: Notify HMRC of your intention to disclose

The first step is to notify HMRC online that you intend to make a disclosure. This is done via the LPC notification form on GOV.UK. HMRC will acknowledge the notification and issue a disclosure reference number. The 90-day clock for completing the disclosure begins from this acknowledgement.

The notification locks you into the campaign terms. Once you have notified, HMRC expects you to complete the disclosure within 90 days. There is no obligation to notify your existing accountant that you are doing this, though it often makes sense to inform them if they will be preparing future returns.

Step 2: Calculate the underpaid tax and interest

This is where many landlords go wrong. The calculation must cover every year in which tax was underpaid, not just the most recent one or two years. For a landlord who has been letting since 2016 without declaring the income, the calculation may need to cover nine or ten tax years.

For each year, you need to calculate:

  • Gross rental income received
  • Allowable deductions (letting agent fees, maintenance and repairs, insurance, ground rent and service charges, mortgage interest, subject to the s24 restriction for residential lets from 2017/18 onwards)
  • Net rental profit
  • Income tax due at your marginal rate for that year, taking account of your other income
  • Interest on the unpaid tax, running from the original payment due date

The s24 mortgage interest restriction applies progressively from 2017/18 and applies in full from 2020/21 onward. Any calculation that ignores this change for the relevant years is incorrect. Similarly, replacement furniture relief, which replaced the Wear and Tear Allowance from 2016/17, must be applied correctly. Our guide to common Self Assessment errors covers the most frequent miscalculations in detail.

Step 3: Submit the disclosure and make payment

The formal disclosure is submitted through the LPC online portal within 90 days of notification. The disclosure form requires:

  • A breakdown of income and expenses for each tax year covered
  • A declaration of the total tax and interest owed
  • A stated penalty amount based on HMRC’s published penalty framework

Payment must be made at the same time as the submission. HMRC does offer a payment plan in cases of genuine financial hardship, the “time to pay” arrangement, but this must be negotiated separately and is not guaranteed.

HMRC will review the submission and either accept it, ask for further information or raise queries about specific years or calculations. Most straightforward disclosures are accepted without significant challenge, provided the calculations are accurate and the penalty is correctly assessed.

What “prompted” means and why it matters

Under HMRC’s penalty framework, a disclosure is “unprompted” if it is made at a time when the taxpayer had no reason to believe HMRC had started or was about to start, an enquiry. It is “prompted” if HMRC has already contacted the taxpayer about the relevant income.

Unprompted disclosures attract lower minimum penalties across all behaviour categories. For careless behaviour, an unprompted disclosure can result in a penalty as low as 0%. The same behaviour with a prompted disclosure carries a minimum of 15%. For deliberate behaviour, the difference between unprompted (minimum 20%) and prompted (minimum 35%) is even more significant when applied to a large tax liability.

HMRC’s “nudge letters”, the standardised letters it sends using data from Land Registry, Airbnb and other sources suggesting that the recipient may have undeclared rental income, constitute a “prompt” for penalty purposes. Once you have received such a letter, your window for unprompted disclosure has closed. See our guide to what happens when HMRC finds undeclared rental income for a practical account of how nudge letters work and what to do when you receive one.

The single most valuable action a landlord with undeclared rental income can take is to act before HMRC makes contact. Every week spent deliberating after receiving a nudge letter costs money in higher penalties.

Online portal or specialist help?

HMRC’s online LPC portal is designed to be accessible to landlords without specialist help. Simple cases, one property, a few years of modest rental income, straightforward expenses, can be handled directly, provided the landlord is confident in the calculations.

In our experience, however, DIY LPC disclosures frequently contain errors that either overstate the liability (the landlord pays more than they owe) or understate it (creating risk of further HMRC attention later). The most common problems we see when clients come to us after a DIY submission include:

  • Incorrect application of the s24 mortgage interest restriction across multiple tax years
  • Treating capital expenditure as revenue expenses (or vice versa)
  • Forgetting to include CGT on properties sold during the period
  • Failing to cover all properties, particularly ones managed by different agents
  • Overstating penalties (paying more than the correct amount under HMRC’s framework)
  • Incorrectly categorising behaviour as “deliberate” when it was “careless”, resulting in a higher self-assessed penalty

If your undeclared rental income spans more than two or three years, involves more than one property or includes any CGT complications, getting specialist input before submitting is almost always cost-effective.

Common mistakes in LPC disclosures

Underestimating the number of years to include

The LPC requires you to disclose all years in which tax was underpaid. Some landlords, particularly those hoping to minimise the size of the settlement, limit the disclosure to the most recent few years. This approach is risky. HMRC’s data extends back many years and a disclosure that covers only part of the actual period of non-declaration is likely to attract further scrutiny and harsher treatment, than a complete one.

Forgetting overseas properties

UK residents are taxable on worldwide rental income. A landlord who discloses UK rental income but omits rental income from a property in Spain, Portugal, or France has made an incomplete disclosure. HMRC receives Common Reporting Standard data from EU member states and has information about overseas property ownership. An incomplete disclosure does not settle the outstanding liability for the omitted income.

Ignoring CGT interactions

If the landlord sold a property during the disclosure period, any capital gain on that disposal should have been reported and taxed. A rental income disclosure that ignores related CGT liabilities is incomplete. HMRC will usually identify the omission from Land Registry records and raise a separate query.

Accepting the wrong penalty rate

Landlords using the online portal are asked to self-assess their “behaviour”. Many choose “deliberate” when their conduct might more accurately be described as “careless”, either out of excessive caution or misunderstanding of the definitions. Overstating the penalty in this way costs money. The legal definitions of “careless” and “deliberate” are not the same as the everyday meanings of those words. See our penalty guide for a full explanation.

What happens after submission

Once a disclosure is submitted and payment made, HMRC reviews the submission. The standard timeline for straightforward cases is 4–8 weeks for acknowledgement. For more complex cases, HMRC may raise queries that extend the process to several months.

If HMRC accepts the disclosure, a formal “certificate of full disclosure” is issued. This confirms that HMRC accepts the amounts as settling the liability for the relevant years. It does not prevent HMRC from raising further assessments if it later discovers material information that was withheld, so completeness matters.

HMRC’s published target for straightforward LPC responses is 15 working days, but in practice, turnaround times vary considerably depending on workload and the complexity of the case.

Can a campaign disclosure be reopened?

An accepted LPC settlement creates closure for the years and amounts disclosed. HMRC does not routinely reopen settled cases. However, where HMRC discovers that the disclosure was materially incomplete, that the taxpayer omitted properties, failed to declare CGT or understated income, it can raise new assessments. The protections against further investigation are limited to what was actually disclosed.

This is one of the strongest reasons to ensure that a disclosure is genuinely complete before submission. The cost of specialist help to scope and prepare a disclosure correctly is typically small in relation to the penalty risk created by an incomplete one.

Need help with a Let Property Campaign disclosure?

Free initial consultation. We prepare and submit LPC disclosures for landlords across the UK.

LONDON: 020 3827 1447 DERBY: 01332 308655

Related guides in this series

Frequently asked questions

Who can use the Let Property Campaign?

The LPC is available to individuals with undeclared UK rental income from residential property. It covers buy-to-let, rooms let in your own home, holiday lets and properties managed by agents. Companies and trusts cannot use this route, alternative disclosure options exist for those situations.

How long do I have to complete a Let Property Campaign disclosure?

Once you notify HMRC, you have 90 days to calculate the tax owed, submit the disclosure and make payment. The clock starts when HMRC acknowledges your notification. Missing the 90-day window does not close the campaign but may affect how HMRC treats your cooperation.

What penalties apply under the Let Property Campaign?

Voluntary LPC disclosures are unprompted, which means lower minimum penalties. For careless behaviour, the minimum is 0% and the maximum 30%. For deliberate behaviour, the range is 20–70%. Waiting for HMRC to contact you converts a disclosure to “prompted”, increasing the minimum penalty significantly.

Can HMRC reopen an LPC disclosure after it has been accepted?

An accepted disclosure settles the years and amounts covered. HMRC can, however, raise further assessments if it later discovers material omissions, such as undeclared properties or CGT on disposals. Completeness of the original disclosure is therefore critical.