It’s a personal Brexit for this landlord!

I couldn’t think of a title for my article so i will leave that to the clever people at Property118.

With Brexit, Section 24, Selective Licensing and all the other crap the Government are throwing at us I am still undecided on what to do, at least in part anyway.

Being an avid reader of almost everything Property118 publish I finally decided to sit down and crunch my own numbers to see exactly how badly affected I will be. So, I got my credit card out and forked out the £97 that Property118 charge for their tax planning software. What an amazing piece of kit that turned out to be! The detail it goes into blew my mind, and it has been made so easy to fill in as well. It must have taken months to produce that. Well done to whoever built it. I always thought I was a bit of a whiz with spreadsheets until I saw the Property118 one.

Anyhow, the bottom line for me was that if me and the wife decide to sell up it will cost us around 900k in capital gains tax if we are still resident in the UK. However, that figure reduces to under 100k if we are living abroad.

I’m not sure yet whether I want to sell up, but if we do, paying an extra 800 grand or more for the sake of the privilege of living in crappy weather most of the time, in a Country where the roads are falling to bits along with the sanity of the politicians is a bit steep if you ask me!

The spreadsheet also told me what i had always thought, which is that my wife and i would be much better off being incorporated if we decide to hang onto our properties for the long term, even if we stay in the UK and draw 100% of the profits out of the business and pay the tax on the dividends. It would cost us around 20k to make the transition ‘all in’, but I’d make that back in tax savings the first year or so.

Then I read the article a few days ago about no tax on dividends if we live in Portugal. Now that really was an eye opener. I’d be even better off doing that whether we decide to sell, incorporate or do a bit of both. So that’s it, decision made, sod it, I’m off and hopefully the Mrs will come with me!

I’ve booked a consultation with Mark Alexander just to sanity check all my figures and I’ve booked two weeks in the Algarve for me and the Mrs in October to have a good look around. I just can’t see the of point remaining in the UK.

I’m building a list of things we are going to have to deal with like post, property management, what to do with our house, health insurance and such like, so if you can think of anything else to add to my list please let me know.

Good luck you you all, regardless of whether you decide to Bremain or Brexit yourselves.

All the best

Phil

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