Let Property Campaign

LangLandlord

Hi,

Has anyone registered for the let property campaign with HMRC for undeclared rental income?

How do you work out the penalties due on unpaid tax?

Also when doing the returns on how much you owe, what information do you need to submit? i,e for the allowable expenses - do you need receipts for everything or can you just show your calculations. Or do you just need keep receipts/records etc in case they decide to look into your submissions?

Any help/guidance would be much appreciated.

Annie1960

Here is the HMRC link showing what records you need to keep.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/record-keeping/index.htm

The Guardian article suggests that penalties will be lower for people who volunteer the information.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/15/landlords-hmrc-undeclared-lettings-income-tax


The usual penalties are here:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/sa/deadlines-penalties.htm

HMRC staff are usually very helpful if you ring them up for advice. If you call them when they first open at 8am it's much easier to get through. If you leave it even 10 - 15 minutes it can take much longer to get through.

Windsorcastle

I got the LPC letter last September. I panicked and had no idea what to do about it. I contacted several companies to get a quote for handling this for me, and I used a company called Rita4Rent, who were competitively priced, but also spent a long time on the phone patiently talking me through the process. They also sent me a brilliant spreadsheet template to fill in, which was a godsend and made the whole process much easier. They also responded to several email enquiries I sent asking about whether I could claim this or that.

They have only just submitted my disclosure, so I don't know the outcome yet (will post here when I do), but I would suggest if you are clueless about taxation as I am, get a decent accountant who specialises in landlord taxation to do this for you. For me, the additional cost if offweighed by the peace of mind that everything is being handled by a professional.

PasturesNew

If the simple tax situation's not been addressed by a LL, it makes me wonder how they fare with the legislation side of things.... you'd not expect your heart surgeon to be posting online saying "I've done a few heart jobs and it seems I have to pay tax on the money....."

Windsorcastle

I think the whole point of the LPC campaign has been to track down thousands of 'accidental' landlords, who 'forgot' to pay all or part of the tax due. But of course, if they are also failing to fulfil legal and health & safety obligations, that is even more worrying.

Pixie5740

I really dislike the term "accidental landlord." Do these accidental landlords accidentally find tenants and accidentally take money from said tenants every month as well as accidentally failing to declare the income to HMRC? What other accidents do they have?