Buy online or call us Free on 0800 515 381 0800 515 381
Opening Hours
Mon – Fri 9am to 6:00pm
Sat 9am to 1pm
Landlords face HMRC crackdown
Landlords are being warned that the HMRC are looking to crack down on those who don’t pay enough tax. It’s easy even for conscientious landlords to sometimes fail to pay their dues, especially as tax affairs can complex and difficult to manage. But with HMRC targeting landlords now is a good time to make sure you’re paying enough.
Becoming a landlord can be an enticing prospect in these times of ever-increasing rents. But those who have been in the business a long time know that things can change very quickly in the rental market. New landlords who want long-term success (and presumably, that’s most of them) would do well to use the experience of long-term landlords to help ease them on their way.
There are an estimated 920,000 empty home in the UK, according to the charity Homes from Empty Homes. Around 330,000 of these have been empty for more than six months. This figure does not include uninhabitable homes, or flats above shops (as these are exempt from council tax), so the real number of empty homes in the UK is likely to be well in excess of a million.
Many landlords refuse to take tenants who plan to pay their rent using housing benefit. There are several reasons for this. Some landlords are worried about frequent government changes to housing benefit rules causing delays in payment, and there may be worries about what happens if a tenant loses their benefit for any reason.
Landlord Accreditation – Unlike in many countries, the lettings industry in the UK is largely unregulated. Anyone can become a landlord or set up a letting agency. The lack of regulation has allowed many people to get started in the industry without having to jump through complicated and expensive hoops.
It is every landlord’s nightmare: a previously reliable tenant fails to pay their rent on time. This can leave landlords struggling to meet their mortgage repayments, and causes a huge amount of stress. Most landlords will have to deal with arrears at some stage, with around 9% of rent unpaid or late.
Rising rents are good news for landlords who want to grow their business, but combined with relatively high unemployment and growth in inflation outstripping growth in wages, they can mean that tenants struggle to […]