Rental income tax calculator

How rental income tax works in Uganda

Rental income is taxed on its own. Section 5 of the Income Tax Act separates it from your other income, so the rent from your houses is not added to your salary and pushed up a band. It is assessed by itself, at its own rate, and it does not matter what else you earn.

The year of income runs from 1 July to 30 June, not January to December. So the figure you are calculating is a full twelve months of rent collected across two calendar years.

If you are an individual landlord

The first UGX 2,820,000 of gross rent in the year is free of tax. Everything above that is taxed at 12%. That is the whole calculation.

The part that surprises people: you cannot deduct anything. Not repairs, not the security guard, not agent commission, not the interest on the loan you built with, not the water bill you paid on the tenant’s behalf. URA’s own worked example takes a landlord with UGX 6,000,000 of rent and UGX 4,100,000 of genuine expenses, and taxes them exactly as if they had spent nothing: 6,000,000 less the threshold is 3,180,000, and 12% of that is UGX 381,600.

This is why the expenses field on this calculator switches itself off when you select Individual. It is not a bug and it is not a shortcut. It is the rule.

If the property is owned in a partnership

Partners are assessed individually. The gross rent is split by each partner’s stake first, and then each partner deducts their own UGX 2,820,000 threshold from their own share before the 12% applies. Two equal partners on one property therefore have two thresholds between them, not one, which is materially better than the same property held by one person. Run this calculator once per partner, on that partner’s share of the rent.

If the landlord is a company or a trust

Companies pay 30%, and unlike individuals they can deduct expenses, though only up to half of the gross rent. The exact wording matters here, because it is the single most misstated rule in Ugandan tax content.

The 50% is a ceiling on the deduction, measured against gross rent. It is not 50% of your expenses, and it is not an automatic half-price bill. You deduct whichever is lower: what you actually spent, or half the rent you collected. URA’s example is a company with UGX 15,000,000 of rent and UGX 11,000,000 of real expenses. The deduction is capped at 7,500,000, chargeable income is 7,500,000, and the tax is UGX 2,250,000. But if that same company had spent only UGX 5,000,000, it would deduct the full 5,000,000, not 7,500,000 and not 2,500,000. Below the cap you get everything you spent.

Expenses have to be real and have to have been incurred in earning that rental income. URA verifies them, so keep the invoices and receipts that back the figure you claim.

When you have to file

Individuals furnish a provisional return in the first three months of the year of income; companies and other non-individuals have six months. Both file a final return within six months after the year ends.

From 1 July 2026 there is a new option: an individual paying rental tax may furnish their provisional return monthly instead. It is permissive rather than compulsory, so you can carry on as before. For a landlord whose rent arrives every month, paying against it monthly is often easier to manage than finding a lump sum at the end of a quarter.

What this calculator is and is not

It is an estimate of the tax on one year of rental income for the 2026/27 year, at the rates and threshold in force. It is not a return, it does not account for anything else in your tax affairs, and it is not tax advice. URA assesses what you actually owe. The rate and the threshold are set by Act and change only at a Budget, each 1 July, so check the figures against ura.go.ug if you are reading this in a later year.

For the fuller picture, covering what to log per unit, how to tell a repair from a capital improvement, and a worked profit-and-loss example that ends in a URA tax figure, see how to track rental income and expenses in Uganda.