Furnished holiday letting rules after the 2024 Budget

In his Budget speech on 6 March Jeremy Hunt announced the abolition of the furnished holiday letting (FHL) rules from 6 April 2025. While this announcement had been trailed in the Sunday Times on 3 March there was no supporting detail in the Budget announcement other than reference to anti-forestalling legislation. In fact there was probably more policy detail in the Sunday Times article than there was on Budget day.

This is not the first time that the death of the FHL rules has been announced. In his Budget on 22 April 2009 Alistair Darling announced that the FHL rules would be abolished from 6 April 2010. The reason given for abolition in 2009 was that the rules were discriminatory as they only applied to UK properties. In consequence they were immediately and retrospectively applied to all properties in the EEA. Ultimately...