2 houses, jointly owned - Main residence

boxrick

I currently own an apartment and a house both on joint mortgages with my girlfriend. One is currently rented and on a consent to lease mortgage ( this was our primary residence till a number of months ago ) and the other is our primary residence. All the bills are under my name on my rented property and it is rented to a friend of ours.

1) Simply put, could I officially make that my own primary residence and leave my girlfriend as the primary resident in our apartment. If I stay for a number of nights a week and use the "rent a room" scheme to rent out the room and reduce my tax burden?

2) If I can do the above, since this will now be primary residence could I change the mortgage to a regular none consent to lease mortgage and reduce my payments?

3) And again above if my primary residence is our other house, could my girlfriend get the council tax single occupancy discount of 25%?

I would like some thoughts on this since I don't want to break any rules but if we can reduce payments by me simply spending some time in our other house then that makes absolute sense!

theartfullodger

So you want to cheat to pay less Tax**?? Hardly patriotic, hardly in those good old British traditions of decency & fair-play..

Cheers!

** PS There are at least 12 taxes a landlord can pay: Just trying to manipulate one tax may end up with you being charged overall more on the others...

elmer

For Council Tax you would probably be able to claim a Single Person discount in those circumstances with no awkward questions asked, however they review the discounts using credit reference agencies, so you will come unstuck a few years later when they ask for all the discount back in one go.

Its your risk to take, also bear in mind some councils also have a charge of £250.00 for falsely claiming SPD.

elmer

lincroft1710

boxrick wrote: »

All the bills are under my name on my rented property and it is rented to a friend of ours.

In law your friend as tenant is responsible for paying the Council Tax not you.

1) Simply put, could I officially make that my own primary residence and leave my girlfriend as the primary resident in our apartment. If I stay for a number of nights a week and use the "rent a room" scheme to rent out the room and reduce my tax burden?

Which tax are you referring to?

2) If I can do the above, since this will now be primary residence could I change the mortgage to a regular none consent to lease mortgage and reduce my payments?

Ask your mortgage provider

3) And again above if my primary residence is our other house, could my girlfriend get the council tax single occupancy discount of 25%?

Your girlfriend will get 25% CT discount on the flat, but you will pay full CT in the house if the circumstances are as outlined in 1).

I would like some thoughts on this since I don't want to break any rules but if we can reduce payments by me simply spending some time in our other house then that makes absolute sense!

The above answers are based on the house being accepted by the relevant parties/authorities as your main residence.

booksurr

boxrick wrote: »

1) Simply put, could I officially make that my own primary residence and leave my girlfriend as the primary resident in our apartment. If I stay for a number of nights a week and use the "rent a room" scheme to rent out the room and reduce my tax burden?

to evade income tax as you would like to do it is more than just a question of how many nights do you spend there.
Clearly as you have a preceding history of a relationship and therefore a pattern of how you live simply saying you spend x nights there would, if challenged, very quickly unravel leaving you ineligible for rent a room since it would not be your de facto primary residence.

Even though you are not married, in this case I think a tax inspector would reasonable in assessing you as living with your girlfriend, just like you used to do, rather than living with your "lodger" who was previously your de facto tenant and only changed status because of tax reasons

of course if the property is sufficiently far away that you genuinely would be living separate lives you may have a chance. On the other hand if you can commute to work from either place I think you have little realistic chance of saying it is your main residence