Proposal for landlord tax break in budget

Oops sorry! I quoted before I read your post!

Wow I didn’t realise there was an ignore list!

That’s one troll dealt with anyway.

Now if people could just not quote the chief troll please all would be perfect. When you see the amount of greyed out posts on a page now its kinda shocking that one person could do that. nice and peaceful though :)

Amen to that!

Pretty startling numbers on the loss of the rental accommodation over the last decade, 80,000 tenancies net, 155,000 gross:

'The number of homes available to rent across the State has fallen by 80,000 in the last 10 years, estate agent Sherry FitzGerald claims.

“We have been discussing private landlords leaving the market for over a decade now,” the company’s managing director Marian Finnegan told a conference on housing hosted by the Irish Home Builders Association on Wednesday.

“In that time, we estimate that the gross loss is over 155,000 tenancies, the net loss is in the order of 80,000 units,” she said. “This is perhaps the principal factor underpinning the homelessness crisis,” '

It seems that for all their hurling from the ditch, SF are actually part of the problem (along with some of the other opposition parties). They have objected to and stopped the building of 12,000 units - not sure of the timeframe on this - and their so-called policy announcements have encouraged vast numbers of private individual property lessors to exit the market, in fear that they may form a government some day. So, that's a number of tenancies heading towards 100,000 that could be on the market but are not.

The current government have made a number of screw ups, by bowing to populism, and I'd say they're now regretting ever introducing the ban on owners recovering their property. In the medium to long term it has solved nothing and actually exacerbated the problem. It was a temporary measure by it's nature so was going to have to end anyway. I haven't seen any viable solutions proposed by the opposition despite all their screaming hysteria. SF said they would extend the ban to next Jan, what's that going to do? Do they think there'll be a magical increase in units and falling rents by then? Of course they don't. It just kicks the can down the road to next winter.

No matter what the government do now to try stem the tide, it's too late to stop the exodus. They've completely lost the trust of all lessors. Whatever you think about private lessors doesn't matter, whatever irrational hatred some people have of them, it won't change the facts.

I don't think you understand case 5. Nothing you have posted deals with that aspect. landlords supply a service. Rent is dealt with as passive income, which might be true of commercial lettings with FRI leases. Residentiual landlords have active duties in connection with the service they are providing. No allowance is made for this in the tax code. there is a big difference between renting out a field on conacre and having to be on call to fix washing machines, leaks and all the other incidentals of letting a residential property.

The tax treatment is discriminatory of residential landlords. A bed and breakfast owner is treated differently to a landlord under the tax code.

Please elaborate then. The advice on Revenue seems crystal clear:

Rental income includes:

• the renting out of a house, flat, apartment, office or farmland
• payments you receive for allowing advertising signs or communication transmitters to be put up on your property
• payments you receive for allowing a right of way through your property
• payments you receive for allowing sporting rights such as fishing or shooting rights on your property
• payments you receive from your tenant to cover the cost of work to your rental property. Your tenant must not be required to pay for this work per the lease
• certain lease premiums, as well as deemed and reverse premiums
• conacre lettings
• payments received from insurance policies that cover against the non-payment of rent.

Just take the first category "The renting out of a house, flat, apartment". That covers the 'Mom & Pop' landlords that are at the heart of this proposed tax break. The argument is that they don't want to be taxed like the rest of us, that they are looking over their shoulder at the large institutional investors and arguing that they pay less tax and that it's all very unfair, boo hoo etc. Is this not the case.

This is exactly what I think as a sole trader when I looked at limited companies and much lower corporation tax rates. But guess what, I have to suck it up, Because that's how it is for sole traders. And that's how it currently is for the 'Mom & Pop' landlords, they either fill in a Form 11 or declare it as additional income if they are PAYE.

Giving these 'Mom & Pop' landlords a tax break is fine as long the same tax arrangements extend to all other self employed etc

Maybe you make a case for landlords running a small portfolio of rental properties as a business? Well in that instance, it's a business like all others and should be taxed exactly the same.

How does it affect your ability to, say, decide whether or not to have an operation done. Suppose it was a complicated operation and you were going to be under general anesthetic for 3-4 hours. Would you have to postpone that until you sell your property? God knows that a lighbulb could go in the property at any stage and the surgeons probably won't want to be reviving you mid operation to have you deal with the complications of fixing the situation.

Would you maybe have to do a thing like they do for presidents where power is temporarily handed over to the vice-president for the times when the president will be incapacitated?

Most of the above doesn't have to have any practical effect other than people having to have things set up correctly. It might be a hassle, and you might have to reorganise things, but the end effect for most people will be the same. Aside from your pre-letting expenses

We are currently accidental landlords & we are paying 52% tax.

We have our our reasons not to sell at the moment but it's not for what

we are earning from the property!

Rules on Preliminary tax are the same for both landlords and self employed people.

I'm surprised LPT is not allowable. Business Rates are allowable for self employed people for example.

I would agree re the non-RTB registration bit, but a big smack of tax implication on top of RTB fines etc., may be excessive.

On the substantive point, something has to be done to stem the flow of exiting small landlords. I'd prefer to see movement on things like RPZs and speed of eviction for non-paying and anti-social tenants, than any changes to tax. Ireland (government, opposition, media, charities etc.) dont want to touch those areas, so maybe some tax incentives can stop the outflow. Personally, I'd like to see more alignment between case i and case v, but would not be a big fan of landlord tax incentives. However, I'm not a tenant and am not facing eviction or finding it impossible to find a rental that will even answer my emails - those are the folks that need something to incentivise small landlords to stay.

Try telling that to someone who has a non-paying tenant and is spending a fortune on legal fees to obtain a lawful eviction. I'm sure availability of loss relief to other income could be a major help.

Only against other case v income. Thats not much help when you're likely to sell after getting stiffed for tens of thousands of Euro by some gouger, who is supported in his gouging by the Irish state.

Which also adds to my argument for allowing the have-a-go's to be flushed out (for their own good). But the salient point is that it can be written off against later income so the effect is only a result of timing.

If you are someone with 10+ properties, you will have other income to write it off against in the same year. It's unlikely all 10 would be in the same position at the same time. If you only have one property, you are probably in a highly leveraged investment that you can't manage when things go wrong.

Stick your money in a REIT and diversify away such risks if you want exposure to property. Your return will be less but that is because the risk is reduced. You can't seek the higher return and complain if you are the unlucky person on whom the risk manifests.