My daughter has property rental losses that were carried forward from the tax year 2016/17. Can she use them to offset against her property rental income for the tax year 2017/18? I ask this because she was unable to enter last year’s loss carried forward figure on to her online tax return when she completed it.

Arthur Weller replies:
It is not clear fr0m the question what the difficulty was. However, the rules state that a rental loss is carried forward automatically, without the necessity to make a claim, and the loss must be used against the rental profits from the first available tax year after the year of loss.