As a landlord in the UK you'll need to complete a self assessment tax return with HMRC. You can do this at any time from April, just after the tax year ends all the way through to January the following year.
As this is published, the end of January tax return deadline is looming large. If you need a bit of help getting organised to sort out your tax return figures this guide will walk you through using PaTMa to complete the process quickly and easily. Even better, you'll be putting in foundations to keep on top of your rental records as you go, then next year you could be ready to file your tax figures in April.
There's a lot you can do with PaTMa to make your property managing life simpler and more organised. This guide concentrates on just getting things ready for your tax return so once that's done do explore some of the other great features.
Get started with Part 1 - Creating your properties. Then follow the other five parts to complete the process.
Guide Parts
Part 1 - Creating your properties
Part 2 - Adding tenancies and adjusting to ignore the past
Part 3 - Recording rent payments
Part 4 - Recording mortgage interest
Part 5 - Recording other expenses
Part 6 - Generate and check your tax figures
Summary
If you're not quite ready to delve into the step by step process in the articles linked above, here's a quick summary of what each one covers.
Part 1 - Creating your properties
Get setup with a PaTMa account and enter the basic details about each property in your portfolio. Quick and easy to get started, should take no more than two minutes per property.
Part 2 - Adding tenancies and adjusting to ignore the past
You'll need a bit more information for this one as you enter each of the tenancies that were active during the tax year. Assuming you just want to get your tax return done, rather than create a full historical record, this also covers how to adjust the dates you enter to keep the critical information.
Part 3 - Recording rent payments
Rent records, bank statements or a very good memory are in order for this step. You'll need to enter the date and amount for each rent payment for each tenancy during the year.
Your reward will be (half of) a nice graph.
Part 4 - Recording mortgage interest
If you've got mortgages, you'll be paying interest. Thanks to the recent changes in tax treatment of mortgage interest it's important that you record it correctly.
Part 5 - Recording other expenses
Here you'll be entering all the other bits and pieces that go into managing property from plumbing bills to insurance and building work to letting agent fees.
At this point you'll have a complete graph per property plus a whole dashboard of insightful portfolio stats and graphs.
Part 6 - Generate and check your tax figures
The all important grand finale, choose the tax year and enjoy PaTMa doing all the work to provide your landlord tax return figures. The report comes complete with easy access to all the details so you can verify nothing has been missed.
Important Note
The tax return calculations produced by PaTMa are entirely dependant upon the data entered and it's accuracy. It's critical that you check the results yourself (see Part 6 for how we make this easy). If at all unsure we always recommend that you seek professional advice.