The short answer
Four questions settle it, and you can answer them before you speak to anyone.
Answer these four before you contact HMRC
- Are you disclosing as an individual rather than for a company, a trust or a partnership?
- Is the property residential?
- Is anything about the income offshore?
- Has HMRC already written to you?
Those four answers point you at one of four routes. The Let Property Campaign is for individuals with undeclared residential rent. Everything the campaign excludes goes through the Digital Disclosure Service. Anything with an offshore connection runs through the Worldwide Disclosure Facility instead, notified the same way. And one route, Code of Practice 9, carries something none of the others does: an assurance against criminal investigation.
Pick before you contact HMRC. The choice is made at notification, and unpicking it later costs weeks against a 90 day clock that has already started.
Most people reading this have a letter on the kitchen table, or years of rent nobody declared and a decision they have finally stopped putting off. Either way the route comes first.
All four run on the same statutory penalty framework, so eligibility is what decides which one you use. Total Books is a regulated, advisory-led practice, and part of that is naming the route even when the route is one we do not run ourselves.
Key takeaways
- Eligibility decides the route, not penalty terms
- Residential rent, individual owner, campaign applies
- Companies, trusts and partnerships are excluded
- Offshore raises the maximum penalty sharply
- Only Code of Practice 9 protects against prosecution
Two questions close together
Two of the four questions sitting close together? That’s the point to ask rather than guess. A free 15 minute call with Total Books settles the route, and nothing goes to HMRC until you say so.
Phone 029 2002 6505.
Which situations does the Let Property Campaign fit?
The campaign fits an individual who owes tax on residential rental income and hasn’t told HMRC. It stretches further than the name suggests, and it covers a single let flat, a portfolio, a room let above the Rent a Room threshold, a holiday let, a house that arrived through an inheritance, and UK property let by someone living overseas.
The campaign is open, and HMRC updated its guidance on 6 April 2026.
Residential rent, received personally, is campaign territory.
Once you know the campaign is your route, our step by step disclosure guide covers what happens inside the 90 days.
Choose the route first
Two questions decide which facility you use
Get this wrong at notification and the correction costs more time than the disclosure itself.
UK only · not deliberate
Let Property Campaign
Undeclared rent from UK residential letting, by an individual landlord. Ninety days from your reference.
UK only · outside the campaign
Digital Disclosure Service
Anything the campaign excludes: companies, trusts, commercial property, other income types.
Offshore · not deliberate
Worldwide Disclosure Facility
Any offshore element. Higher penalty ranges apply, and the offshore rules run alongside.
Deliberate
Code of Practice 9
The only route carrying an assurance against criminal investigation. Take advice before you notify.
Unsure which box you fall into? We name the facility, set the timetable and put a regulated agent between you and the correspondence.
Have the route confirmedWhat is the Digital Disclosure Service, and when do I use that instead?
The Digital Disclosure Service is HMRC’s general voluntary disclosure route, and it’s where you go when the campaign doesn’t fit. It handles underpaid income tax, capital gains tax, corporation tax, National Insurance, inheritance tax and the annual tax on enveloped dwellings.
HMRC’s own wording is direct. Where your only undeclared income is from residential letting, use the Let Property Campaign. Anything wider, or anything from an entity rather than a person, starts here instead.
Our Digital Disclosure Service page sets out how Total Books handles those cases.
Let Property Campaign or Digital Disclosure Service: which applies to you?
The Let Property Campaign applies where every pound you’re disclosing is residential rent you received personally. Anything else, whether that’s an entity, a commercial unit or a second income stream, starts with the Digital Disclosure Service.
| Your situation | Route |
|---|---|
| One let flat, undeclared rent, you own it personally | Let Property Campaign |
| Four buy to lets in your own name | Let Property Campaign |
| Rent plus undeclared self employment income | Digital Disclosure Service |
| A lock up garage let to a neighbour | Digital Disclosure Service |
| Rental income inside your limited company | Digital Disclosure Service |
| A let property held in a family trust | Digital Disclosure Service |
| A flat in Spain you have never declared | Worldwide Disclosure Facility, take advice first |
| Deliberate concealment over many years | Code of Practice 9, take advice before notifying |
The choice is made at notification, and the clock has already started.
Mixed cases are where the eligibility test does the most work. A landlord with undeclared rent and undeclared freelance income has more than letting income, so the campaign is the wrong route even though the rent would have qualified on its own. The same test applies where a lodger in your own home sits alongside a second let property.
Let Property Campaign
- Who it fits
- An individual who owes tax on residential rental income and hasn’t told HMRC
- Excluded
- Companies, trusts and partnerships, and commercial or other non residential letting
- Assurance against prosecution
- No
Digital Disclosure Service
- Who it fits
- Everything the campaign excludes, including an entity rather than a person
- Taxes covered
- Income tax, capital gains tax, corporation tax, National Insurance, inheritance tax and the annual tax on enveloped dwellings
- Assurance against prosecution
- No
Worldwide Disclosure Facility
- Who it fits
- Anything with an offshore connection, notified through the Digital Disclosure Service
- Maximum penalties
- 100, 150 and 200 per cent of the tax, by territory category
- Assurance against prosecution
- No
Code of Practice 9
- Who it fits
- A long running deliberate exposure, run as the Contractual Disclosure Facility
- Conditions
- A full and accurate disclosure, made under a formal contract, within a set timetable
- Assurance against prosecution
- Yes
Uncertainty about which route you’re supposed to use is itself worth a conversation. One client, writing after taking up the free tax advice we offer, said the guidance was “clear, practical, and tailored to my situation, helping me better understand my tax position and the appropriate next steps”.
★★★★★ Ahsan S. in his own words, Google review, December 2025
Does the campaign cover a shop, a garage or a lock up?
No. HMRC names those three exclusions directly, and commercial and other non residential letting goes through the Digital Disclosure Service.
Mixed use property splits across both routes. A shop with a flat above it produces two streams of income, and only one of them is residential. You split the income between them, then disclose the residential part through the campaign and the commercial part through the Digital Disclosure Service. The tenancy agreements and the managing agent’s statements usually settle which part is which, and a rent book will do it where no agent was involved.
Holiday lets sit on the residential side of the line and are covered. What changed for them is the tax treatment rather than the route: the furnished holiday lettings regime was abolished from 6 April 2025, and our guide to the furnished holiday lettings changes sets out what replaced it.
I let through a limited company or a trust. Can I still use the campaign?
No. The campaign is open to individuals only, and disclosures made on behalf of a company, a trust or a partnership are excluded whatever kind of property is involved.
All three go through the Digital Disclosure Service. What changes is the liability and who signs:
- a company, disclosing corporation tax, with the company making the disclosure
- a trust, with the trustees making it
- a partnership, with each partner’s own position still to settle separately
Directors get caught by a second problem here. Rent that went into a personal account while the property sat on the company balance sheet raises a director’s loan question alongside the disclosure, and that’s a separate conversation with our limited company team.
I let a property abroad. Is that the Worldwide Disclosure Facility?
Probably, and the Worldwide Disclosure Facility question turns on where the property is, not where you live.
UK property let by a landlord living abroad is a Let Property Campaign case, because the income arises here. Overseas property brings an offshore issue into the picture, and offshore issues run through the Worldwide Disclosure Facility, notified through the Digital Disclosure Service with the same 90 day mechanics.
Two things change once you cross that line, and both matter before you notify.
Maximum penalties rise. Territories sit in three categories reflecting how much information they share with the UK, and the caps run at 100, 150 and 200 per cent of the tax rather than the 100 per cent ceiling on UK liabilities.
Older years carry a separate trap. The Requirement to Correct window closed on 30 September 2018, and offshore non compliance that existed at 5 April 2017 and wasn’t corrected by then attracts Failure to Correct penalties. Failure to Correct penalties start at 200 per cent of the tax and reduce to a floor of 100 per cent, and they don’t vary with your original behaviour. A landlord who made an innocent mistake on a Spanish holiday flat in 2015 can still be looking at a 100 per cent minimum.
Where foreign tax has already been paid on the same rent, double taxation relief usually reduces the UK liability. Our guide to double taxation relief on foreign rent explains the mechanism, and our foreign tax service handles the wider position.
A worked example.
A UK resident inherited a small flat in Portugal in 2014 and let it out seasonally, paying Portuguese tax on the rent and never reporting it here. Net rents averaged about £4,200 a year and, as a higher rate taxpayer, the UK liability came to £1,680 a year. Portuguese tax of £1,100 was relieved against that, leaving roughly £580 of UK tax a year. The exposure was never the tax. It was the pre April 2017 years, where Failure to Correct penalties start at 200 per cent and don’t fall below 100 per cent regardless of behaviour, which turned a small annual tax figure into the largest single element of the settlement.
Does any disclosure route protect me from prosecution?
One route does, and it isn’t the Let Property Campaign.
The one route that carries it
The Contractual Disclosure Facility, run under Code of Practice 9, is the only route where HMRC gives an assurance that it won’t pursue a criminal investigation into the conduct you disclose. Code of Practice 9 is the only route that carries it. The campaign, the Digital Disclosure Service and the Worldwide Disclosure Facility do not.
The assurance comes with obligations: a full and accurate disclosure, made under a formal contract, within a set timetable.
On a domestic buy to let this rarely arises. Where a long running deliberate exposure is in the picture it becomes the whole question, and it should be answered by a specialist before a single notification is submitted. Cases that belong under Code of Practice 9 go to a specialist in the Total Books partner network, and we work from offices in Cardiff, Newport and Bristol with the rest of the UK covered through our Virtual Finance Office.
Someone who called us with requirements outside what we take on described what happened: “Whilst he doesn’t take on clients with the specific requirements I had, he was very honest about that, shared a bunch of useful information and said he would refer a handful of other professionals to me who do specialise in the areas I need help with.”
★★★★★ Matt O. in his own words, Google review, February 2023
What happens if I disclose under the wrong route?
You lose time, and time is the scarce resource in a disclosure.
HMRC can reject a notification made under the wrong facility, and the 90 days that were running do not reset while you work out what went wrong. A landlord who notifies under the campaign for a company’s rental profits will be told to start again through the Digital Disclosure Service.
A second mistake costs more than a wrong route. Submitting a disclosure that only covered part of what you owed leaves the rest outstanding, and HMRC finding it afterwards is not a voluntary disclosure at all.
Where the route was wrong but the intent was plainly right, the sequence of what you did and when is worth putting in writing. HMRC weighs the quality of a disclosure, and a landlord who notified promptly under an honest misunderstanding presents differently from one who left it another year.
Do the penalty rules change depending on the route?
Not much, which is why eligibility rather than penalty terms decides the route. Schedule 24 Finance Act 2007 covers inaccuracies in a return you filed, Schedule 41 Finance Act 2008 covers failing to tell HMRC you had income at all, and behaviour sets the range in both. The step by step guide carries the full tables.
The offshore differences set out above are the only ones that change the arithmetic. HMRC’s own factsheets carry the ranges: CC/FS7a for inaccuracies, CC/FS11 for failure to notify, and CC/FS17 for offshore matters.
Interest is identical across every route. It runs daily from each original due date and no reduction touches it. Our note on HMRC interest and penalty changes covers the mechanism.
A second worked example.
A landlord let a former home in Cardiff for six years and also let a lock up garage to a neighbour on the same street. The house rent alone would have qualified for the Let Property Campaign. The garage is non residential, so the whole disclosure went through the Digital Disclosure Service instead. Rental profits on the house totalled £21,800 and the garage produced £3,400 across the same period, giving £25,200 and about £5,040 of tax at the basic rate. The penalty framework was identical to the one the campaign would have applied, at 15 per cent on a careless prompted basis. Splitting it into two disclosures would have delayed both and pushed the second outside the unprompted range.
Landlord disclosures
One route, chosen once, notified properly
We name the facility, notify HMRC for you and rebuild the years behind it, so the 90 days go on the disclosure rather than on working out where to send it.
Should I get an adviser to choose the route before I contact HMRC?
Yes, where more than one route could plausibly apply. The decision is cheap to get right at the start and expensive to unpick once a reference number exists.
The four questions at the top of this page are what a first conversation works through, and none of them needs your paperwork in front of you. A rough start date, the number of properties and whether a managing agent handled the rent are enough to begin. Tenancy agreements, letting agent statements and bank statements can follow later.
Total Books can act for you from that point with a signed form 64-8, which puts us on the HMRC Agent Services Account for your case so the correspondence comes to us rather than your doormat. You send your records through our secure client portal, and we rebuild the years in Xero with Dext capturing whatever paperwork you still hold.
Total Books is an AAT licensed practice, an HMRC registered tax agent, a Companies House authorised agent and a Xero Certified Advisor firm, working from offices in Cardiff, Newport and Bristol.
From our casework
Complex positions are where the first conversation earns its place. One client, calling about a complex Self Assessment position, wrote that Buhir “took the time to guide me through the process and put my mind at easy regarding the process”.
★★★★★ Lydia B. in her own words, Google review, November 2020
Where we work. Disclosure cases are run from our offices in Cardiff, Newport and Bristol, and everywhere else in the UK through the Virtual Finance Office.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use the Let Property Campaign if HMRC has already written to me?
Yes. A nudge letter doesn’t remove your eligibility. It usually makes the disclosure prompted, which raises the minimum penalty within the same range.
What if I have undeclared rent and undeclared capital gains on a property I sold?
Both can go into one disclosure. A UK residential property sale also carries a separate 60 day reporting duty, so the sale needs handling alongside the disclosure rather than after it. Our capital gains tax service covers the position.
Is the Worldwide Disclosure Facility only for hidden offshore accounts?
No. It covers UK tax liabilities connected to an offshore issue, and income from a source outside the UK falls inside that definition. Overseas rent qualifies.
Do I need a different route for each tax year?
No. One disclosure covers every year in scope for that route. The number of years is set by behaviour, not by the route you use.
Can you tell me the route without me giving my name to HMRC?
Yes. A first conversation with Total Books involves no contact with HMRC at all, and nothing is notified until you decide to notify.
Keep reading
Three guides that pick up where this one stops, one for each of the routes above.
Inside the 90 days
Notification, calculation, submission and payment, once the campaign is your route.
The disclosure, step by stepOutside the campaign
How we run disclosures for companies, trusts and income the campaign will not take.
Digital disclosures explainedRent from abroad
Relief for foreign tax already paid on the same rental income, and how it is claimed.
Double taxation reliefWhat to do next
Answer the four questions at the top of this page and you have your route. Where two of them are close, that’s the point to ask rather than guess.
Book your free 15 minute call · Phone 029 2002 6505
Free 15 minute call
Settle the route before HMRC hears your name
One conversation names the facility, sets the timetable and puts a regulated agent between you and the correspondence. Our Let Property Campaign disclosure service takes it from there.
Total Books Accountants Ltd is an AAT licensed practice, an HMRC registered tax agent and a Companies House authorised agent. This guide is general information about HMRC’s disclosure facilities and is not advice for a specific situation. The taxpayer remains responsible for what is disclosed to HMRC. Figures in the examples are illustrative, and client comments are past reported experiences rather than a promise of any future result.
