Tax for ministers of religion: what changed on 6 April 2026
Reviewed by Rob Webb, practising accountant since 2015 · Last reviewed September 2026 · Figures are for the 2026/27 tax yearReviewed by Rob Webb, practising accountant since 2015 · Last reviewed September 2026 · Figures are for the 2026/27 tax yearAre you a minister of religion? From 6 April 2026 you can no longer claim for extra household costs such as heating, lighting and landline calls.
What still stands? Your vicarage or manse is still normally tax-free, and the two "quarter rules" for rent and upkeep still apply.
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This is the part to read carefully, because it reverses something almost every minister was doing.
Until 5 April 2026, a minister could deduct the additional household expenses of using the provided accommodation for ministerial duties — in practice a proportion of heating, lighting and telephone costs. Many parishes, dioceses and individual ministers had a settled way of calculating it, and it appeared on the SA102M pages year after year.
From 6 April 2026, section 360B ITEPA 2003 applies to ministers. A deduction for additional household expenses is no longer allowable, either under section 351 or under the general rule in section 336. Heating and lighting are specifically out. So are landline call costs, which were previously claimable and are now excluded.
The old treatment applies only to 2025/26 and earlier years. It is not being phased out and there is no transitional easing in the guidance: the 2025/26 return is the last one on which the claim belongs.
Two practical consequences. First, your 2026/27 tax bill will be higher than last year's for no change in your circumstances. If you deducted £500 of heating and lighting last year and you pay basic rate, that is £100 more tax this year. Second, if you are copying last year's figures forward — and many ministers reasonably do, because the numbers rarely move — you will file an incorrect return unless you take that claim out.
What has not changed is reimbursement. If the parish or diocese pays a heating or utility bill directly, that is a matter for how the payment itself is treated, not a deduction on your return. If you are unsure how your payments are being handled, ask whoever runs your payroll before you file.
Normally, no.
Where a minister performs the duties of the ministry from the provided accommodation, living accommodation supplied by the church is not treated as a taxable benefit. This is settled and is set out in HMRC's Employment Income Manual at EIM60020. It reflects the reality that the vicarage, manse or presbytery is a place of work as much as a home: people call at the door, meetings happen in the study, and the minister is expected to live there.
This is worth stating plainly because it is one of the most common worries we hear, usually from someone who has been told by a well-meaning friend that "you must be paying tax on that house". In the ordinary case, you are not.
What can be taxable is something different: a cash allowance paid to you instead of accommodation is earnings, and council tax or utility bills paid on your behalf are dealt with under their own rules. Those appear on your payroll records, not in the accommodation question.
There are two separate deductions under section 351 ITEPA. They are often run together into one vague "the quarter rule", which leads to claims being made in the wrong place or twice. They are distinct, and they cover different money.
The rent quarter rule. If you pay rent for the dwelling you live in, you can deduct up to one quarter of that rent, where part of the dwelling is used substantially for the purposes of your ministerial duties. This one is about rent you personally pay.
The maintenance quarter rule. Separately, you can deduct up to one quarter of expenditure on the maintenance, repair, insurance or management of the accommodation. This applies where an ecclesiastical corporation or a charity holds an interest in the property and you perform your duties from it. This one is about the upkeep of the property, not about rent.
Three points apply to both. "Up to" one quarter is a ceiling, not an entitlement — the claim must reflect the actual extent of ministerial use. Neither deduction is available where the cost has been reimbursed to you in a form that is not taxable, because you cannot deduct money you did not ultimately bear. And neither of them revives the household expenses claim that section 360B removed from 6 April 2026: maintenance, repair, insurance and management are not the same thing as heating and lighting.
In practice most stipendiary ministers live in church-owned accommodation, pay no rent, and so use only the second rule, and only where they personally pay some of the upkeep or insurance costs rather than the diocese paying all of it.
The list is shorter than it was, and it is worth knowing exactly what survived. HMRC sets out the allowable items at EIM60047.
| What you can claim | What to watch |
|---|---|
| Stationery and postage used for your ministerial duties | Parish notices, correspondence, service sheets. Keep receipts; these are small individually and material over a year. |
| Secretarial assistance necessarily incurred in performing your duties | Payments to a spouse for work done as a church volunteer are specifically not allowable. Genuine, paid assistance for your ministerial work is. |
| Expenses of unpaid ecclesiastical appointments, such as rural dean or honorary canon | The appointment being unpaid is the point: you are bearing costs of a role that brings no stipend. Keep a note of what the role required. |
| Books bought for conducting services or preparing sermons | Commentaries, liturgical texts, reference works. General reading that happens to be religious is not automatically deductible. |
| Up to one quarter of rent paid, where part of the dwelling is substantially used for ministerial duties | Only if you actually pay rent, and only to the extent justified by real ministerial use. |
| Up to one quarter of maintenance, repair, insurance or management costs of the accommodation | Only where an ecclesiastical corporation or charity holds an interest in the property and you perform duties from it, and only for costs you bear yourself. |
| Heating, lighting and landline call costs | No longer allowable from 6 April 2026. Listed here because it was allowable until 5 April 2026 and is the item most likely to be carried forward in error. |
If a cost has been reimbursed to you in a non-taxable form, it does not go on the return as a deduction. That is the single rule that most often turns a well-intentioned claim into an incorrect one.
A stipendiary minister in England, living in church accommodation, paying no rent. The stipend is £31,000 and £900 of taxable fees were retained personally during the year. The minister paid £1,200 towards insurance and maintenance of the property, none of it reimbursed, and claims a quarter of it.
| 2026/27 | |
|---|---|
| Stipend | £31,000 |
| Taxable fees retained | £900 |
| Total taxable earnings | £31,900 |
| Stationery and postage | £120 |
| Books for services and sermon preparation | £180 |
| Maintenance and insurance quarter rule: one quarter of £1,200 | £300 |
| Heating and lighting | £0 — no longer allowable from 6 April 2026 |
| Total deductions | £600 |
| Net taxable earnings | £31,300 |
| Less personal allowance | £12,570 |
| Taxable income | £18,730 |
| Income tax at 20% | £3,746 |
| Class 4 National Insurance | Not applicable — ministers are taxed under the employment income rules |
| Taxable value of the vicarage | £0 in the ordinary case |
The working: £31,900 of earnings less £600 of deductions is £31,300. Take off the £12,570 personal allowance and £18,730 is taxable, all within the basic rate band which runs to £50,270, so income tax is 20% of £18,730 — £3,746.
Most of that will already have been collected through the payroll, so the Self Assessment return is usually reconciling rather than producing a large bill. National Insurance is Class 1, deducted through the payroll on the stipend, and is not recalculated on the return.
Compare it with last year. Had this minister claimed £500 of heating and lighting in 2025/26, deductions would have been £1,100 rather than £600, taxable income £18,230, and tax £3,646. The loss of that one claim costs £100. Modest, but it is real, and it arrives without warning.
Ministers in Scotland pay Scottish rates and bands on non-savings income — a starter rate of 19%, basic 20%, intermediate 21%, higher 42%, advanced 45% and top 48% — so the figures above would differ.
Ministers attached to a particular church or congregation have their own set of rules under sections 290 and 351 ITEPA 2003, and their own tax return pages: SA102M, the ministers of religion supplementary pages. If your church has told you to file, or you have retained fees, or you want to claim the deductions above, SA102M is where it goes.
Income from outside the ministry is separate. Occasional writing, lecturing, retreat leading or supply work done on your own account is trading income, and the £1,000 trading allowance applies to it: £1,000 of gross trading income in 2026/27, before costs, across all such activity. Under that, there is nothing to report on account of it. Over it, you report and then choose between deducting the flat £1,000 or your actual costs, not both. The announced rise of that threshold to £3,000 has no commencement date on gov.uk, so £1,000 is the figure to use.
If you need to register for Self Assessment and have not filed before, do it by 5 October following the end of the tax year. The paper deadline is 31 October and the online deadline, with any balancing payment, is 31 January.
No. Ministers of religion filing SA102M are automatically exempt from Making Tax Digital for Income Tax beyond April 2027.
That is a genuine and useful exemption. It means no compatible software, no digital record keeping obligation, and no quarterly updates on 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. Your return remains an annual one.
Be aware of the boundary. The exemption attaches to you as an SA102M filer. If you also run a substantial separate business or let property, look at the qualifying income rules for that activity in their own right, because qualifying income is gross self-employment turnover plus gross property income added together, before expenses. Several other groups are automatically exempt too, including Lloyd's members, claimants of Married Couple's Allowance born before 6 April 1935, and claimants of Blind Person's Allowance.
If your only income is the stipend, tax is right through the payroll, and you have no deductions to claim, there may be nothing to file at all — and if there is, HMRC's free online service handles SA102M.
If your claims are a handful of receipts and last year's return was straightforward, you can file it yourself in an evening. The change this year is a subtraction, not a complication: the return is simpler than it was, not harder.
It is worth paying someone when the accommodation arrangements are unusual, when you are unsure whether something has been reimbursed in a taxable or non-taxable form, when you hold several appointments or serve across a group of parishes, when you have separate self-employed or rental income alongside the ministry, or when you want last year's return checked before this year's is built on it.
No. From 6 April 2026, section 360B ITEPA 2003 applies to ministers and a deduction for additional household expenses, including heating and lighting, is no longer allowable under section 351 or section 336. It was allowable up to 5 April 2026, so it belongs on the 2025/26 return and not on this one.
Landline call costs are excluded from 6 April 2026. They were previously claimable as part of the additional household expenses deduction, and that route has closed along with heating and lighting.
Normally not. Where you perform the duties of the ministry from the accommodation, provided living accommodation is not treated as a taxable benefit. A cash allowance paid instead of accommodation is different and is earnings.
You can deduct up to one quarter of the rent you pay, where part of the dwelling is used substantially for the purposes of your ministerial duties. "Up to" is a ceiling, and the claim has to reflect genuine ministerial use of the property.
Not where the work is done as a church volunteer — payments to a spouse for volunteer work are specifically not allowable. Secretarial assistance that is genuinely and necessarily incurred in performing your duties, and genuinely paid, is allowable.
Yes. Ministers of religion filing SA102M are automatically exempt from Making Tax Digital for Income Tax beyond April 2027. If you have substantial separate trading or property income, check that activity against the qualifying income thresholds on its own terms.
Filed Tax prepares ministers' returns on the SA102M pages, applies the quarter rules correctly, and makes sure the household expenses claim that ended on 5 April 2026 is not carried forward by mistake. It is £25 a month with the first month free, and Rob Webb reviews every return before it is filed. Send us last year's return and we will tell you what changes.
Rob is a Certified Xero Advisor with a BSc from the University of Salford. Last reviewed September 2026 against GOV.UK guidance current at that date. This guide is general information, not personal tax advice. Figures are for the 2026/27 tax year and can change at each Budget — always confirm the current numbers on GOV.UK or ask us to check your situation.