Property tax 101: all the basics you need to know

This week we turn our attentions to tax. It might be inevitable, but could you be paying more than you need to because you’re not setting up your property business correctly?

We’re far from experts on tax matters, so we invited Chartered Accountant Iain Wallis to provide the information.

We talk about:

• Does HMRC consider you an investor or a trader, and what difference does it make in terms of tax?
• Should you invest through a limited company or not (probably the #1 question we get)
• The importance of understanding the difference between revenue and capital expenses
• A clever way to count some of your legal fees as revenue costs
• A list of all the expenses you can offset against your income
• The tax position for non-UK residents who invest in UK property
• Understanding Capital Gains Tax
• Benefiting from Principal Private Residence relief on properties you’ve ever lived in

A big thank you to Iain for helping us out with this episode. Even if you take our recommendation to employ an accountant to take care of tax matters for you, it’s still invaluable to educate yourself about the basics.

In the news this week it was announced that the government’s Help To Buy scheme has been launched three months early – or has it?

The small print shows that you can only apply now, so is the whole announcement just political point-scoring? And is it true that the lenders are nowhere near ready anyway? We air our conspiracy theories and open ourselves up to looking very daft in the future by making our predictions!

Tell us what you thought of the show!

Do you have a tax question we didn’t answer?

Anything you understand better as a result of listening?