Letting our our home whilst we are residents abroad

Bloberts

Hello

We are renting our house out here in the UK when we move to Sydney in July. We have never rented out house out before wanted to get some knowledge before we choose an agent.

Does anyone have any tips or knowledge?

Things we wanted to know about:

• Managed property rental
• Tax issues (i.e. how much do we get taxed)

or anything else we don't already know about.

We are having new carpets and changing the windows that are single glazed to new double glazed units. We had a new boiler last summer, and we are redecorating throughout, so it's in a fairly optimal state when we rent it out.

If anyone has tips, please let us know!

Some agencies say they can do a managed rental, and pay the tax on this straight to the tax man. I don't like the sound of this, as we might not get to take off deductions before we pay tax.

If we paid the tax ourselves, I was hoping it would mean that we can do all the deductions before we work out tax. I believe things like all insurance, interest from mortgage, agents fees etc are all tax deductible.

and if we are non resident, does anyone know if there is any tax-free allowance?

And lastly, if anyone has tips on choosing an agent (we are in Wrexham) - that would be good.

We are very early days with this, so any tips or info would be gratefully recieved

Thanks in advance

benjus

You have 3 options for paying UK income tax:

1. Receive rent in full and pay tax on it, subject to HMRC approval - fill in this form
2. Tenants pay your agent the rent in full and the agent deducts tax
3. Tenants pay you directly but deduct tax and pay it to HMRC

The last option is probably best avoided - sounds like you want the first option, but you will need to get HMRC approval.

I can't comment on Australian tax obligations, however.

Pixie5740

You can either have the LA deduct the tax for you or you can pay the tax through self-assessment if you complete form NRL1i and return it to HMRC. Note that as a non-resident LL you cannot complete your tax return online. (Don't know why.)

You should also check and see if Australia will also tax you on your rental income too.

For further information please see:

https://www.gov.uk/tax-uk-income-live-abroad/overview

Edit: Also see G_M's guide to selecting a Letting Agency

xylophone

If you have a mortgage, do you have consent to let?

Have you contacted your insurers?

Bloberts

xylophone wrote: »

If you have a mortgage, do you have consent to let?

Have you contacted your insurers?

No and no.

But we remortgaged recently and mentioned that we would rent the place out, and our lenders (Nationwide) said that changing it ver was straightforward (but the interest was a little higher).

G_M

New Landlords (information for new or prospective landlords)

Letting Agents (Tips for selecting, and tips for sacking them)

HMRC (Property taxes eg Income Tax on rent (and allowable expenses to offset tax); Capital Gains Tax, etc)

HMRC (Non Resident [= overseas] Landlord Scheme)

Land_Registry

Hi there

If you are vacating your property for a considerable period of time LR advises updating address for service in the property that you own ie the address in entry B1 which we use to officially correspond with owners.

This will ensure you receive official notice from us and can help prevent fraud. You can have up to three addresses in the register including email and non-UK addresses.

Please see our pages on the GOV.uk website

Protect your land and property from fraud

4. Update or correct the register