Holiday letting property - salary

chrismac1

You're covering all the bases here! Central heating is an integral feature - i.e. something not normally removed by either tenant or landlord - well not a decent tenant anyway! So it is claimable as a renewal over and above the 10% / other basis of wear and tear, providing it amounts to a genuine replacement and not an upgrade which would be capital.

debsy72

Ha Ha I know.

Whilst it's nice to make a profit, it's also nice to have somewhere to stay when visiting our family for a couple of weeks a year (the ski resort is very expensive). And an investment for our retirement, although I hope I'm still skiing at 80!

Just don't want the taxman to pocket more tax than he has to from us! By paying me for my work means that I at least use my personal allowance. I'm not for avoidance just for getting what I'm entitled to!

silvercar

Mahmood_Reza wrote: »

If your kids are old enough you could pay them a salary and claim this - it must be commercially acceptable and commensurate with their duties, eg a payment of (for example) £100 for 2 hours work would not be acceptable

Thanks for this. We are looking at buying a holiday home overseas and I never thought of "employing" the kids to go and inspect it.

debsy72

silvercar - one thing I didn't know was that you cannot claim for the expenses when buying the property. We spent a sum on flights, car hire etc! I think the kids have to be 14 or something.
Buying our holiday home in a ski resort has been great. The whole transaction was really smooth. I like their buying process, no gazumping etc. The fees do clock up though!

silvercar

debsy72 wrote: »

silvercar - one thing I didn't know was that you cannot claim for the expenses when buying the property. We spent a sum on flights, car hire etc! I think the kids have to be 14 or something.
Buying our holiday home in a ski resort has been great. The whole transaction was really smooth. I like their buying process, no gazumping etc. The fees do clock up though!

I would expect the expenses to be allowable as they were incurred in buying the let property. Do you mean not allowable against rental income and that they have to put against any capital gain?

Ours won't qualify as a holiday let in the way that the revenue will allow losses to be put against earned income as its outside the EU (at least for the foreseeable future ).

I would still expect any costs incurred in running the letting, including visits to check up on it to be allowed against the rental income.

debsy72

You're right on all 3 points (at least I think so for the 1st one). Plan to use the services of an accountant to make sure I have it all right.

chrismac1

Now that we've moved on to different countries, my advice to anyone before buying is to:

1. Check out the legal systems of the country involved.
2. Make sure you're going to want to spend time in that country, and if needs be can get out there at short notice.

The clients who do best out of rental properties in the UK are those who live near them. They can do quick repairs if they need to, they can find their own tenants or point out to the letting agent that his or her claims that the void period is due to "tough market conditions" is bunkum. Hopefully over time they at the very least buuild up a small network of guys who they trust to do repairs well, or turn up and sort out other issues for them - a quick resolution to a problem makes a big difference to your impression of the place whether you are there on holiday or a long-term tenant.

Finally, when things get nasty - and sadly if you rent a property out for long enough to enough people sooner or later somone is going to abuse it in some way - you can get things sorted out better. In the UK, so long as the person can be traced and has not done a midninght flit, and has funds, it's cheap and easy to sue them in the County Courts. In some other countries even if the person has a traceable address it is neither cheap nor easy, plus you have extra flights to a place and maybe not a very enjoyable stay while you're there, and suddenly the whole experience is not great.

debsy72

Or, like me, have 2 siblings and their partners living in the town/resort you want to buy in that oversea it all for you!