Petition for tax relief reinstatement – Government says ‘No’

Reply to the comment left by Helen Smitj at 19/01/2023 - 12:31
The simple answer is politics. They need to be 'seen' to be working with Government. Ben Beadle has also stated the ship has sailed on S24 which I disagree with as a NRLA member. That is why they are not backing it as they could easily have done in their usual Friday afternoon emails to the membership but nothing. I have even stated it on the NRLA forum. Maybe Property Tribes can pick this up with him directly in their webcast due in Feb.
But we have to keep going to get that 100,000 with or without them

Reply to the comment left by Gone Fishing at 19/01/2023 - 11:47
I assume you mean the availability and actual letting requirements. Assuming you can meet these (which with the right property you will do) you do have a choice

As someone else has said, this may be a factor in the expansion of AirBnB. Changing a BTL to an FHL avoids the need for incorporation etc to get full tax relief

The government response doesn't make sense.
I don't think anybody thought the old system was unfair. It certainly wasn't introduced because landlords were in uproar about how unfair it was.
It was perfectly fair to exclude finance costs from total income calculations. And then to pay income tax on the actual money that you earned.
I have now been pushed into a higher income bracket than I'm in if the money i have left to live on is the measure.
And I pay more tax on this money than everyone else in the country who earns the same amount (landlords excepted). How is that fair?

Reply to the comment left by Crouchender at 19/01/2023 - 12:42The ship has not sailed on s24.
Laws can be introduced and they can be withdrawn/amended. It happens all the time. If you don't try, you don't get.
As a first step, they could allow interest to be DEDUCTED from rental profits at 20%, for a lot of landlords this will prevent them going into the 40% bracket.
The representative associations should be fighting the landlords' corner, otherwise why are they there?

Hi All,
With the amount of unincorporated Landlords in the UK who are significantly impacted by the introduction of Section 24 by George Osbourne, why are we still unable to overturn this since 2015? It is a wholly unjust and unfair additional tax imposed on us yet we seem to be unable to do anything about it. It has NO merit and has no logic to it as clearly demonstrated by Dr Rosalind Beck in her submissions to HM Treasury.
There was a recent petition I saw on Linked-In titled 'Reinstate tax relief allowing mortgage interest to be set against rental income' created by Simon J Foster. The deadline is 10/05/23. It needs to reach 100,000+ signatures before it is considered for debate in Parliament. Both my wife and I signed this immediately. To date, there are only 28,240 signatures. I'm shocked at how low this figure is. Are we really prepared to accept the status quo and be dictated to? If we are all in agreement that the changes should be overturned, can we PLEASE show unity and everyone access the petition and add their signature to it. For your convenience, the link is provided below:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/627785
H

I assume the point of the response is to dissuade the landlords from reaching 100,000.
With this interpretation, the response is a good thing, as it tells us having 100,000 signatories will make it uncomfortable for the government.

Firstly the correct procedure is to whip up support with an orchestrated public relations exercise and Then
Put up the petition!!!!!!
Otherwise it will not succeed to get 100000?
We have a housing crisis in this country and local Government and Housing associations cannot step up to the plate largely due to the PSBR.
As far as I can see the private sector is the only way forward.
A higher rate taxpayer can buy a hotel and lease it to a hotel management company and get tax relief and the same applies to airBnb and commercial property.
The government has closed the door to wealthy people investing in private rental property by removing the tax incentive . As a consequence the housing crisis gets worse.
It is supposed to encourage people to but\y their own houses. A newly wed couple will buy a 3 bed house and have two person occupancy but the same house rented out will have every bedroom fully occupied . More people are housed in rental properties!!!!!!!!!

Reply to the comment left by david porter at 20/01/2023 - 13:15
I agree that the petition needs more visibility. I have advised my clients and professional bodies, but it really needs to be pushed on social media and every MP should be written to by as many people as possible.

However, not my area of expertise, it needs influencers, etc to take up the cause.

The only way anything will get changed is if all affected landlords stick together.

I contacted my local tory mp regarding the unfairness of section 24 and the burden put on local councils due to reduced private rental housing stock as landlords leave the sector.

Typically he would not answer direct questions and points to policies as per the link below.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-finance-cost-relief-for-individual-landlords/restricting-finance-cost-relief-for-individual-landlords

When asked to see the evidence of the monitoring and evaluation, I was told that i would have to contact hmrc myself.

So they obviously are not even monitoring their own policies.

Some good news is that groups like shelter seem to be easing on the landlord bashing, although unlikely, maybe they will come on-board.

If the landlord groups and housing charities could work together and get the government to introduce a national landlord accreditation/licencing scheme in exchange for revoking section 24, would be a sensible trade off.

Reply to the comment left by Helen Smitj at 19/01/2023 - 12:31
Will everyone who reads this article, as I have, write to the NRLA and urge them to email all their members. I have also asked Property 118 to do the same, but of course this is not in MA`s interests so they aren`t keen to do so.