DAC7 in Practice: HMRC Now Holds Line-by-Line Airbnb and Booking.com Data on 4 Million UK Sellers

In short: The UK's equivalent of the EU DAC7 regime — the Platform Operators (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2023 — required its second annual data drop by 31 January 2026. HMRC received reports on 3.99 million sellers, up from 1.47 million in the first year. Every UK STL operator listed on Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo or similar is now in that dataset. Your return needs to match.

The Platform Operators (Due Diligence and Reporting Requirements) Regulations 2023 brought UK digital platform reporting in line with the OECD Model Rules from 1 January 2024. The first annual report was due to HMRC by 31 January 2025, covering the 2024 calendar year. The second, covering 2025, was due 31 January 2026 — and HMRC has now published headline figures for both.

What the platforms send HMRC

For every UK-resident host meeting the reporting thresholds, in-scope platforms (Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo/Expedia, and others) send HMRC a defined data set:

• Host identity: name, address, date of birth, Tax Identification Number (National Insurance number for individuals; UTR for sole traders; company registration number for entities)
• Financial account details (where held for payout)
• Per-property: address of the rented property, land registry number where known, and number of let-nights in the quarter
• Per-property: gross consideration received (booking value before platform fees), broken down by quarter
• Any fees, commissions, or taxes withheld by the platform
• VAT registration status

The data is granular. It is not a total-only figure. HMRC receives quarter-by-quarter income per property, matched to your NI number or UTR.

The numbers HMRC now hold

For 2024 (first year), HMRC received reports on 1.47 million sellers. For 2025 (second year, reported January 2026), that jumped to 3.99 million sellers — a 272% increase in one year, covering close to £55 billion of online earnings. The jump reflects both wider platform coverage and HMRC's own tighter matching of the same seller across multiple platforms.

Every UK STL host active on a major platform in 2025 is in that dataset.

Why this matters for your return

HMRC's compliance approach is now data-driven in a way it was not two years ago. The pattern we are seeing across our practice:

Nudge letters keyed to specific figures. HMRC's Wealthy and Mid-sized Business Compliance directorate is sending letters that name the platform, name the property, and quote the reported income figure. This is not a guess — it is the data the platform sent them, printed on the letter. In some cases we have seen letters quoting the reported figure to the exact pound.

Automatic reconciliation against self-assessment. Where the sum of platform-reported gross income for a taxpayer exceeds the property income declared on their return by more than a defined threshold, an automatic review is triggered. Most of these do not proceed to enquiry, but a proportion do.

Cross-referencing with the Land Registry. Where the property address on the platform report does not match the taxpayer's declared ownership, or where a jointly-owned property is only being reported by one owner, HMRC's system flags it.

The three common reconciliation problems

Across the returns we have prepared this year, three specific mismatches come up over and over:

1. Gross vs net. The platform reports gross consideration (booking value before its own commission). The operator often reports net receipts (what actually arrived in the bank). The difference is the platform fee, which is a deductible expense — but it needs to be shown on both sides of the return, not silently netted.

2. Timing. Platform reports run to calendar year. UK income tax runs to 5 April. The reconciliation between the two is not a straight arithmetic — it requires a quarter-level workings, and if not done carefully throws up phantom mismatches.

3. Joint ownership. Where a couple own an STL jointly, and the platform account is in only one spouse's name, the platform reports 100% of the income against that spouse. Both spouses need to be declaring their half on their own returns, and HMRC's matching engine will flag the mismatch if it is not clearly reconciled.

What operators should do

1. Ask your accountant to reconcile every one of your returns against the DAC7-equivalent data. If they cannot do this exercise, you are exposed.
2. If you have received a nudge letter, do not ignore it. Response options and their consequences are covered in our next-published Let Property Campaign piece.
3. If your return omitted platform income for prior years, act on it now. The Let Property Campaign disclosure route carries substantially lower penalties than waiting for HMRC to open an enquiry.
4. Set up your bookkeeping so gross booking value, platform fees, and net receipts are all visibly captured. This is standard on any accounting system worth using for STL — it is not universal.

The DAC7 data drop has changed what HMRC can see. Assume, for planning purposes, that your figures are already visible to them.

Book a free consultation to run a DAC7 reconciliation across your returns.

Sources: AVASK — DAC7 explained and reporting numbers; Property Tax Partners — AEOI for landlords; Bookster — DAC7 and digital reporting for holiday lets; Ibiss & Co — Why Airbnb shares data with HMRC.