Rent A Room Scheme

Kynthia

notional wrote: »

Thanks for all the suggestions and debate so far. Can I just interject to say:
- I am a she not a he
- Hold times to call HMRC are around 60 minutes at the moment, otherwise I would have gladly called them up about this before bothering people on this forum
- As per the helpful information on Apportionment, I have made a sample calculation based on sharing my rent and fixed expenses on the flat 50/50, based on the floor area occupied, and adding a sum spent on a mattress, and it does not come out as worth it to opt out of the RAR scheme. For people with two lodgers, I would think it would start to become more worth it.
- HMRC are presumably raising the threshold next year for precisely this reason, so they don't have to deal with fiddly little customers with their receipts for mattresses and gas and whatnot. What surprises me is that there don't seem to be any links to the PIM2005 Manual in any of the HMRC or Gov.uk information about Rent a Room. How people are supposed to decide I don't know. Well they can look at this thread now I guess!

No one has said you can split the rent 50/50 and I don't think many people would think it was a reasonable deduction. The lodger doesn't have equal use of your property as you have greater rights than them. Therefore apportionment based on floor space or their room compared to the total number of rooms in the property (including bathroom) could be argued as fair.