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The Autumn Budget is on Wednesday 28 October 2026. It will be John Healey first as Chancellor, under Andy Burnham, who became Prime Minister on 20 July 2026.
The most useful thing I can tell landlords is this. The biggest tax change coming your way is already law, it was announced almost a year ago, and it is not up for debate on 28 October. Everything getting the attention right now is speculation. Sorting those two things apart is most of the value in reading anything about the Budget.
The Autumn Budget is on Wednesday 28 October 2026.
Property income tax rates rise to 22, 42 and 47 per cent from April 2027. That is already law.
The rise applies to individuals and trusts, not to property held in a limited company.
National Insurance on rental income is speculation, not policy.
Making Tax Digital already applies to landlords above the £50,000 threshold.
What is already confirmed?
Two things, and both matter more than the rumours.
Income tax rates on property income rise by two percentage points from April 2027. Announced at the Budget on 26 November 2025 and now in the Finance Act 2026, the rates on rental income become 22%, 42% and 47%, against 20%, 40% and 45% on employment and pension income. The stated reasoning was to narrow the gap between tax on work and tax on income from assets, given that rental income does not attract National Insurance. There is a related change to how the personal allowance is applied, set against employment income first.
It applies to individuals and trusts receiving rental income in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Income tax rates for Scottish taxpayers are devolved and are not changed by this measure. It does not apply to property held in a limited company, which is taxed under corporation tax rules instead.
The second is Making Tax Digital for income tax, which is already underway. Landlords with gross property and self employment income above £50,000 came into it from April 2026. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. It means digital records, quarterly updates and a final declaration replacing the self assessment return. Limited company landlords are outside it.
Landlords are not talking much about the Budget yet, in my experience. They should probably be talking about April 2027 instead.
What is being speculated about?
Three things, none of them confirmed.
National Insurance on rental income is the one that gets the headlines. A Treasury plan leaked in August 2025 proposed charging 8% on rental income, matching the self employed rate, with an estimated £2.3bn of revenue. It did not happen in November 2025. The property income rate rise arrived instead, which arguably does a similar job by a different route. Whether it comes back is anyone guess.
Property tax reform more broadly. In his first broadcast interview as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham declined to rule out a proportional property tax to replace council tax, a land value tax, and a lower threshold on the mansion tax. Declining to rule something out is not the same as proposing it, and officials played down the prospect of anything imminent. Nothing has been published, there is no timetable, and any of it would need a nationwide revaluation exercise taking years.
Capital gains tax. Commentators have suggested alignment of CGT with income tax rates, which would matter a great deal to anyone thinking about selling. Again, no proposal, no date.
One more to keep an eye on, though it affects few landlords: the high value council tax surcharge on homes worth over £2m, announced in November 2025 and due from April 2028. The consultation closed on 14 July 2026 and it has not been legislated yet. It applies in England and falls on the owner rather than the occupier, so a let property above that value would be caught.
Speak to an expert
Tax changes are your accountant territory. What the borrowing looks like is mine. I am a whole of market broker and I handle buy to let cases in personal names and limited companies.
Should landlords do anything before 28 October?
My view is yes, but not what people mean by doing something.
Follow it from a distance and work out how any change would land on your own numbers, so that when something is announced you already know whether it affects you. That is different from restructuring your portfolio on the strength of a newspaper story. Every Budget produces a wave of landlords making expensive decisions based on rumours that then do not happen, and the costs of those decisions are real even when the rumour is not.
There is one practical thing worth doing, and it is not a tax thing. If you are planning to increase rents, remember the Renters Rights Act now limits you to one increase every twelve months, through the Section 13 process, with two months notice. So if rising costs are part of your thinking, the rent lever is slower than it used to be and it needs planning further ahead. That also feeds into what you can borrow.
Should I move my properties into a limited company?
I get asked this every time tax comes up, and the April 2027 rise will make it come up more, because that two point rise does not apply to companies.
What I say is: speak to an accountant, because everyone situation is different. A company can produce a better tax outcome, but then you pay company costs on top. If you are a basic rate taxpayer including your rental income, paying somewhere around £1,400 a year in accountancy fees can wipe out the benefit entirely, and you would have gone through the whole exercise to end up worse off.
And moving existing properties into a company is not a transfer, it is a sale from you to the company. That can mean capital gains tax on the way out and stamp duty on the way in, before you have refinanced a single loan. For some landlords the numbers work. For plenty they do not.
What I can help with is the lending side, which is a real constraint people forget. Limited company buy to let is a different product set with different pricing and different criteria, and if the borrowing does not work then the tax question is academic. The limited company buy to let page covers how that lending works.
What this means for your mortgage
Very little directly. Budgets move tax, and tax does not change what a lender will lend you. What tax changes do is affect the profit on your properties, and over time that affects what landlords choose to do: hold, sell, restructure or refinance.
The one thing worth doing in the next few months has nothing to do with the Chancellor. If your fixed rate ends in 2027, start looking at options well before it does, because the rental stress test decides what you can borrow and that calculation needs planning around, not reacting to.
I will write up what actually lands once the Budget has been delivered, rather than guessing beforehand. If you are a landlord in Hampshire and want to talk through what your options look like on the lending side, I am a mortgage broker in Winchester working across the whole market. More background on the buy to let mortgage hub, and if a deal is coming to an end, the buy to let remortgage page.
Budget risk is one of the reasons landlords give for selling up. If you are on the other side of that trade, read why a new landlord sees this market differently.
Inflation is one of the numbers the Chancellor will be watching closely too. I have covered what July’s UK inflation figures showed and what they mean for interest rates.
The Mortgage Works’ Q2 2026 landlord survey adds more context here: 43% of landlords now say they intend to sell a property in the next 12 months, against just 6% planning to buy. I go through the rest of that data, including the regional yield picture, in this Q2 2026 buy to let market update.
Need Personal Mortgage Advice?
Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and can change. Nothing here is tax advice, and you should speak to a qualified accountant before acting on any of it. The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate most buy to let mortgages.
