LF comments on CGT on landlords moving homes into Ltd company

For landlords with a small portfolio, particularly those purchasing a single residential investment property, incorporating may not provide enough benefit to justify the additional costs and administration. The costs of transferring an existing property, including Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT), Capital Gains Tax, refinancing and mortgage considerations, can also make the decision difficult.
As portfolios grow, we increasingly see professional landlords consider limited company structures for future purchases. One consideration sometimes overlooked is that when purchasing through a limited company, lenders usually require Directors to provide a Personal Guarantee, meaning personal exposure can remain despite the property being company-owned.
This is where Personal Guarantee Insurance can help. Purbeck can insure a proportion of this exposure, helping Directors protect their personal assets while continuing to grow their portfolio.

It's vital to get proper tax advice for your own personal situation and ignore so called influencers who claim it's a no brainer. Getting it wrong can be expensive

Who qualifies is exactly who qualified before. The test is still whether the landlord is running a business, which the rules for this relief never define. It turns on what the landlord does. HMRC's 20 hours a week is not a pass mark. It is HMRC telling its own staff to accept the relief at that level, and the same page says landlords doing less may still be running a business. What changed this April is that the relief now has to be claimed, where before it applied on its own. Move properties this tax year and the claim must be in by 31 January 2029. Turning an automatic relief into one you have to ask for is a quiet trap. The transfer counts as a sale at full market value, so the whole gain on every property held personally lands in one tax year, against one annual exemption. Relief only exists where shares come back, not cash, so an unclaimed one can leave a bill with no sale proceeds behind it. And this is a capital gains relief. In England it does nothing about the stamp duty bill.