Property Records & TaxCompletion Statement Reconciliation

The sheet your solicitor sends showing every penny of a property deal: the price, the tax, their fees, the mortgage money coming in, and the balance you had to send them. It is the single most important document for your records, and the one most landlords file without ever checking.

Because the figures on it end up in three different places: what the property cost you, this year’s rental accounts, and your bank. Get the split wrong and you either pay tax you did not owe, or claim something you cannot. Posting every line twice — once as money out or in, once to where it lands — proves you have missed nothing.

That everything going out equals everything coming in. A property deal always balances: the price plus the costs equals the mortgage plus your own money. If the two sides differ, a line is missing, entered twice, or on the wrong side. The page tells you the moment it balances.

The price itself, stamp duty, the legal fees for buying, searches and Land Registry fees. On a sale, the estate agent and the legal fees for selling. These reduce the gain when you sell, so they save capital gains tax rather than income tax.

The costs of arranging the borrowing rather than of buying the building: the lender’s arrangement or product fee, the valuation, the broker fee, legal fees on a re-mortgage, and any early repayment charge. They go on the SA105 with your other expenses, subject to the restriction on finance costs for residential lettings.

Enter it twice, which is exactly what happened: once as a cost, and once as part of the advance. That is why the advance on your statement is larger than the money you actually received. The page handles it as two lines and still proves.

Yes. Choose the kind of transaction at the top and the lines change: buying, a further advance, a re-mortgage, a second charge, or selling. Each starts with the lines that transaction normally has, and you can add or rename any of them.

No. It is a record of what you entered, arranged the way an accountant would arrange it. Whether a particular cost is capital or revenue can turn on the facts, and the treatment of finance costs for residential property has its own rules. If a line is large or unusual, ask your accountant. Landlord Tax Enquiry is not authorised or regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Not in the way most people expect. They are costs of borrowing. If you own the property in your own name and let it residentially, finance costs do not come off your rental profit at all: you get relief at the basic rate instead. If a company owns it, they come off in full. The page keeps them in their own pile for that reason.

Enter the whole advance as it appears on the offer, then enter the retention as a separate line. The advance on the offer, less the retention, is what reached your solicitor. Do it that way and the sheet proves, and your record matches the offer.

Do one reconciliation for each. Split the shared lines — the legal fee, for instance — on a fair basis, usually by price, and say in Notes how you split them. Two proved sheets are worth far more than one muddled one.

To a lender, yes, always. Say in Notes whether it was savings, the sale of something, or a gift, and keep the evidence with this sheet. It is the first thing an underwriter asks about a completion statement.

Revenue. It is an incidental cost of obtaining loan finance under ITTOIA 2005 s58, not part of the cost of the property, so it is excluded from the CGT base cost. On a residential letting held personally it falls within the Section 24 restriction and gives a basic-rate tax reduction rather than a deduction. Held in a company, it is deductible in full.

They are a cost of borrowing, so revenue rather than capital — the same treatment as the arrangement fee. Only legal fees on the acquisition or the disposal of the property itself are capital. On a remortgage, a further advance or a second charge, every legal fee attaches to the loan.

Debit Property at cost with the price, stamp duty, legal fees and disbursements; debit Loan and finance costs with the lender and broker fees; credit Mortgage loan with the gross advance; credit Bank with the deposit and completion balance. The debits equal the credits, and the page produces exactly that journal, dated and narrated, from the completion statement.

Post each line once, as it appears on the statement, and analyse it once to the column it belongs in: what the property cost or what you owe, this year’s accounts, or the bank. When the two sides agree the statement is reconciled, and the netted journal is what you post. That is the whole method of this page.

Nothing is sent to us or to anyone else. Your figures stay on this page unless you switch on Remember on this device, save them as a file, or download them as Excel or PDF.