Each payout
The date it reached you, the bookings in it, what the guests paid, the platform's fee, any refunds taken from it, and which property each booking was for.
Guide for hosts
Airbnb accounting in the UK: what to record, and when it counts.
The payout in your bank is the end of the story, not the start. Here is what a UK host needs to record for each booking and each cost, when each one counts for tax, and how to keep it right all year without re-typing a thing.
Your income is what the guest paid, not what you were paid
For each booking, your rent is the whole amount the guest paid for the stay - the nightly price and the cleaning fee you charged them. The platform's fee comes out of that before you are paid, but it is still your income first and the platform's fee second: a cost of your letting, recorded on its own.
Recording only the payout makes two figures wrong. Your income is too low - and income before costs is what decides whether Making Tax Digital applies to you. And your costs are too low by every fee, so the two errors cancel in your profit while both boxes on your tax return are wrong.
- Refunds and adjustments the platform takes back from a later payout reduce your rent.
- Damage paid to you by the platform - a resolution payout - is income too.
- Tourist or occupancy tax collected from guests and passed to you to pay over is not your income.
When it counts: the day the guest pays the platform
Most hosts letting in their own name use the cash basis, which is the default for a property business with receipts of £150,000 a year or less: income counts when it is received and costs when you pay them. And a platform receives your guests' payments as your agent - HMRC's rule for rent an agent collects is that it counts when the agent receives it, not when it is passed on to you. So a booking made and paid for in March, for a stay in May and paid out in May, is March's income.
That matters at the end of the tax year: a guest who books in March for an April stay has paid you in the old year, though the payout reaches your bank in the new one. Keep all three dates: when the guest paid (the booking date in your platform's file), when the payout reached your bank, and the stay dates for the nights.
What to keep for each payout and each cost
Each cost
The date you paid it, the amount, what it was for and which property it belongs to - or how it is shared between them - with the receipt or invoice.
Keep your records for at least five years after the 31 January deadline for the tax year they belong to. A platform's earnings page is not a record you control: download your files.
Owned with someone else
If you own a let jointly, you report your share of its rent and its costs. A married couple or civil partners are taxed half each unless they own it in unequal shares and tell HMRC. Your share is also what counts towards the Making Tax Digital threshold.
Check it against your bank
Every payout should appear once on your bank statement, within a few days of the platform sending it. Matching them catches a payout that never arrived, a cost you forgot and a payout counted twice. It is the step most spreadsheets skip. How payouts and bank lines tie up.
How Stoneledger Hosts does it
Drop in your Airbnb, Booking.com or Vrbo file and every payout is recorded as the rent the guests paid and the platform's fee, dated the day you were paid, against the right property. Add your costs, or bring in your bank statement and they arrive with a category suggested. Each payout is then found on your statement as the one line it is. Every figure opens to the records behind it.
Sources, read on 7 October 2026: HMRC's Property Income Manual on rent collected by an agent (PIM1094) and the cash basis for property businesses; GOV.UK on working out your rental income, including how long to keep your records, and on qualifying income for Making Tax Digital.
More for hosts
Keep reading, or try it on your own file.
Holiday let tax after April 2025
What changed when the furnished holiday lettings rules ended.
What an Airbnb host can claim
The costs that count, the ones that do not, and the box each goes in.
Airbnb payouts and your bank
Why the money in your bank never matches your bookings, and how to tie them up.
Making Tax Digital for hosts
Who is in, from when, and what counts towards the line.
Booking.com for UK hosts
Commission, payment fees and VAT on fees, and how payouts are made up.
Beyond the host spreadsheet
What a spreadsheet does well, and where it starts to cost you.
Free Airbnb profit check
Your own file, read on your device: what you were paid, and what you made.
See what your own lets actually made.
Stoneledger Hosts reads your Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo files, takes your costs and your bank statement, and shows your true profit, property by property. Start with the free check on your own file.
Airbnb, Booking.com and Vrbo are trademarks of their owners. Stoneledger Hosts is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by them. This guide is general information, not tax advice; for your own circumstances, speak to a qualified adviser.