From April 2028, every landlord SPV must file a full P&L account. Abridged accounts are abolished entirely. HMRC sees the numbers whether or not your rental income appears on the public register.
What Has Happened?
Companies House confirmed on 9 June 2026 that the abridged accounts option for small companies and micro-entities ends in April 2028. The announcement resolved a period of uncertainty that had started when the original April 2027 start date was paused in January 2026 after sustained pushback from small business groups and their advisers.
The legal basis is the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA). Parliament passed the Act to tackle fraud and improve corporate transparency. The accounts filing reform is one of the flagship changes being introduced under it.
Under the current rules, a micro-entity landlord company (turnover up to £1 million, balance sheet total up to £500,000, no more than 10 employees, meeting at least two of those three conditions) can file an abbreviated balance sheet on the Companies House public register with no profit and loss account at all. That option disappears on 1 April 2028. From that date, all small companies and micro-entities must submit a balance sheet and a full profit and loss account in a single iXBRL digital submission. A directors' report is required for small companies, though micro-entities are exempt from it. The paper-based filing route closes. The Companies House web-based filing service closes too. Everything has to go through commercial accounting software.
One partial protection survives. A company can elect to file the P&L without publishing it on the Companies House public website. The account is still submitted and remains accessible to HMRC, Companies House, and law enforcement. It simply doesn't appear when someone searches your company number on the public register. The mechanics for electing this opt-out had not been confirmed by Companies House as of June 2026.
Small company thresholds are slightly broader: turnover up to £15 million, balance sheet up to £7.5 million, and no more than 50 employees, again meeting at least two of the three. Most landlord SPVs qualify as micro-entities on all three criteria without needing to check.
Why This Matters to UK Property Investors
Roughly 80% of new buy-to-let purchases in 2025 were made through limited companies. The shift started when Section 24 phased in from 2017, removing mortgage interest relief for individual landlords. The October 2024 CGT rate increase to 24% on residential property sales pushed more landlords across the line. The practical result is that more landlords now hold property through limited company structures than at any previous point in the sector's history. The April 2028 reform catches all of them.
The first material change is what HMRC can see. Tax authorities currently receive financial information from landlord companies through corporation tax returns. Cross-referencing that against other data sources requires manual extraction. From April 2028, standardised iXBRL-format P&L accounts flow directly from Companies House to HMRC. The ability to cross-reference a landlord company's declared rental income with its P&L account, and then with the director's personal self-assessment return, improves at scale from the moment the data set becomes standardised. That is the point of the ECCTA reform: not the filing itself, but what the filing enables.
The second change is the preparation cost. Most landlord SPV directors use an accountant for their annual corporation tax return. The iXBRL submission requires specialist software and the time to produce a full P&L in the required format. For a well-run SPV where the numbers are already accurate, this is a process change, not a structural one. For landlords who have been filing basic accounts cheaply or through a low-cost online service, the accountancy overhead rises.
The third change is competitive. If other landlords operating in the same postcode run limited companies and do not elect the public register opt-out from 2028, their turnover and profit will be searchable. In a tight HMO market in Manchester M14 or Leeds LS6, where a relatively small number of operators hold most of the stock, the income and cost structure of your competitors becoming publicly available is a significant shift.
The Risks Investors Need to Understand
The most consequential risk is not the filing obligation itself. It is what a standardised, systematic P&L data set allows HMRC to do that it could not do efficiently before.
A landlord company that has maintained accurate records, filed correct corporation tax returns, declared all rental income, and claimed only legitimate deductions has nothing structural to fear. The numbers being submitted in April 2028 are the numbers HMRC already holds through the corporation tax return. The format is different and the delivery mechanism is different. The underlying data is not new.
A landlord company where the accounting picture is less clean is in a different position. The April 2028 date creates a clean before-and-after point when standardised data begins flowing from every small company and micro-entity simultaneously. HMRC's ability to identify discrepancies between company P&L accounts and individual self-assessment returns improves sharply. That is roughly two years away. The time to address any inconsistencies in company accounting records is during that window, not after the data starts flowing and triggers a compliance letter.
Privacy is a separate risk to understand carefully. Under current rules, a landlord company filing abridged accounts discloses very little about its trading activity on the public register. Assets and liabilities at a point in time. A full P&L discloses rental income, operating costs, interest payable on buy-to-let mortgages, and net profit. The public register opt-out suppresses that from the Companies House website. It does not suppress it from HMRC or from Companies House itself during an enquiry.
The iXBRL requirement also closes the door on self-filing. The Companies House web-based service closes in April 2028. Landlords currently using it need to move to compliant accountancy software well before that date. Leaving the transition to March 2028 is the kind of deadline that produces rushed filings and accountants working on compressed timelines at premium rates.
Where the Opportunity Could Be
The reform tilts in favour of landlords already running properly structured SPVs. From April 2028 those landlords have a verifiable P&L filing history that any lender, co-investor, or buyer can check. Clean accounts are not just a compliance box. They are a demonstrable track record.
The trend toward portfolio sales as SPV share transactions is worth watching alongside this change. When a landlord sells a property held in a limited company as a share sale rather than a direct property disposal, the buyer avoids SDLT on the underlying asset. From April 2028, a buyer doing due diligence on a potential SPV acquisition can request or locate its P&L accounts from Companies House and verify the rental income history and cost structure directly, assuming the seller hasn't elected the opt-out. A portfolio held in a Birmingham B21 limited company with two years of clean filed P&L accounts from 2028 is a more transparent acquisition proposition than the same portfolio without that history. Clean and verifiable translates to premium on the exit.
For landlords with properties spread across multiple SPVs, the reform adds a real administrative cost that makes the multi-entity structure worth reviewing. Eight properties across four companies means four P&L filings, four iXBRL submissions, and four accountancy bills per year. If the business case for separate entities still holds, the overhead is manageable. If the properties were split into separate companies for reasons that no longer apply, consolidation makes sense.
Landlords incorporating now for the first time have roughly 21 months before the first accounts filed under the new regime appear. That is enough time to build clean record-keeping into the company from the first year of trading, which is far easier than reconstructing records for prior periods under pressure in 2027.
Arsh's Investor View
I've used limited companies for property for a long time. Section 24 made it the right call for most serious landlords, and the case for incorporation has only got stronger since the October 2024 CGT rate change. The ECCTA P&L filing reform is the first significant administrative cost that cuts against running through a company, and I think it deserves an honest assessment rather than a dismissal.
For my own SPVs, the practical impact is manageable. My accountant already produces full management accounts for each company. The iXBRL submission from April 2028 is a process change, not a new set of numbers I don't have. The accounts are clean. The rental income is declared. The deductions are properly documented. If HMRC wants to cross-reference the P&L against anything else, they'll find what they expect to find.
What I think this reform is actually aimed at is the large tail of landlord companies that incorporated for tax reasons but haven't maintained the accounting discipline that comes with running a proper corporate structure. There are a lot of them. The ECCTA's primary purpose is economic crime and corporate transparency, and property is one of the sectors where opaque small company structures have been used to conceal undeclared income for years. From 2028, that becomes significantly harder to sustain.
My practical advice: elect the public register opt-out when the mechanics are published. Not because there is anything wrong with the numbers, but because making your rental income turnover searchable on the Companies House website serves no purpose for most landlords. Keep it clean, keep it filed correctly, but keep it off the public register.
One thing I'd push back on is any assumption that this reform weakens the case for limited company ownership. It doesn't. It raises the bar on the accounting standards expected of a landlord company, which is different. The tax advantages of the corporate structure remain intact. What changes is that using those advantages properly now requires proper corporate accounting. That was always the correct way to run a company. The reform just enforces it.
How Property Investor App Can Help
Property Investor App lists buy-to-let opportunities across the UK from direct sellers, portfolio landlords and professional sourcers, including deals structured as SPV company sales where the buyer avoids SDLT on the underlying property. For investors who are currently sole traders and weighing incorporation ahead of the April 2028 accounts reform, PIA's deal feed covers high-yield markets in Birmingham, Sheffield, Sunderland and Middlesbrough where limited company purchases make financial sense at current rates. For landlords reviewing their SPV structure and considering consolidation of stock held across multiple entities, PIA connects you with active portfolio buyers who can move chain-free on bulk acquisitions. For anyone acquiring a portfolio via an SPV company sale, PIA sourcers in those markets understand the structure and can walk you through what due diligence on a company acquisition requires, including how to read the filed accounts once the April 2028 data starts flowing.
Key Takeaways
- Companies House confirmed on 9 June 2026 that all small companies and micro-entities must file a full profit and loss account from 1 April 2028, alongside a balance sheet, in a single iXBRL digital submission. Abridged accounts are abolished. Paper and web-based filing routes close on the same date.
- Most landlord SPVs qualify as micro-entities (meeting at least two of: turnover up to £1m, balance sheet up to £500k, up to 10 employees). All micro-entities and small companies are caught by this reform under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023.
- A public register opt-out is available: companies can elect to file the P&L without publishing it on the Companies House website. The account is still filed and remains accessible to HMRC, Companies House, and law enforcement. The mechanics of electing the opt-out had not been confirmed as of June 2026.
- The reform materially improves HMRC's capability to cross-reference landlord company P&L data with corporation tax returns and self-assessment declarations in standardised iXBRL format. Landlords with inconsistencies in their company accounting records have approximately two years to address them before that data starts flowing.
- Landlords currently using the Companies House web-based filing service must migrate to iXBRL-compliant accounting software before April 2028, when that route closes. Late migration in early 2028 means compressed timelines and premium accountancy rates.
- Clean and verifiable P&L accounts from 2028 add demonstrable value to portfolios held in SPVs, particularly for share sale transactions where buyers can independently verify the trading history without SDLT exposure on the underlying property.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is changing about Companies House accounts filing from April 2028?
From 1 April 2028, small companies and micro-entities in the UK must file a full profit and loss account with Companies House for the first time, alongside a balance sheet, in a single iXBRL digital submission. Companies House confirmed this on 9 June 2026. The legal basis is the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. The abridged accounts option, which currently allows small companies and micro-entities to file an abbreviated balance sheet without a P&L, is abolished. The Companies House web-based filing service and paper-based filing both close on the same date. All filings must go through commercial accounting software capable of producing iXBRL output. A directors' report is required for small companies; micro-entities are exempt from it.
Will my landlord limited company's rental income be publicly visible from 2028?
Not automatically. Companies House is introducing an opt-out that allows companies to file their profit and loss account without making it visible on the public Companies House website. If you elect the opt-out, your P&L will not be searchable by the general public. However, the P&L account is still submitted to Companies House and remains accessible to HMRC, Companies House itself, and law enforcement bodies for anti-fraud and economic crime purposes. The opt-out suppresses the public web view only. As of June 2026, the exact process for electing this opt-out had not been confirmed by Companies House, so check for updated guidance from your accountant or Companies House directly before April 2028.
Which landlord companies are caught by the April 2028 accounts reform?
All small companies and micro-entities registered at Companies House are affected. A micro-entity must meet at least two of three conditions: annual turnover no more than £1 million, balance sheet total no more than £500,000, no more than 10 employees. A small company must meet at least two of: annual turnover no more than £15 million, balance sheet total no more than £7.5 million, no more than 50 employees. Most landlord Special Purpose Vehicles (typically registered under SIC code 68209) qualify as micro-entities on all three criteria. The only landlord companies outside scope are large companies meeting the thresholds to be classified as medium or large, which is rare in the BTL sector.
Does this change whether I should use a limited company for buy-to-let?
Not in itself. The tax advantages of operating through a limited company, including the ability to claim full mortgage interest relief against rental income as a business expense and the lower corporation tax rate compared to higher-rate income tax on personal rental profit, remain intact. The April 2028 reform raises the accounting standards expected of a landlord company. It means the cost of running an SPV properly, with a qualified accountant producing iXBRL-compliant accounts, goes up slightly compared to the informal approach some landlords have used. But the financial case for incorporation that applied before this reform applies after it. The reform is a compliance cost, not a structural change to the tax treatment.
What should landlord company directors do before April 2028?
Three things. First, check that your annual accounts are accurate and that your rental income declarations in your corporation tax returns are consistent with what the company's bank statements and rental ledgers show. Any inconsistencies are significantly easier and cheaper to address before April 2028 than after the standardised data starts flowing to HMRC. Second, if you are currently using the Companies House web-based filing service, speak to your accountant now about transitioning to iXBRL-compliant accounting software before April 2028. The web service closes on that date. Third, when Companies House publishes the opt-out mechanics for the public register, elect it. There is no business benefit for most landlords in making their rental income turnover searchable on the Companies House website.
