Rental income and allowable expenditure

Rental income and allowable expenditure

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My clients own a seaside holiday home, which is empty for most of the year. The owners spend a few weeks there per year, plus several weekends, mainly to do maintenance and repair work.

The property is let via a local agent for no more than 8 ' 10 weeks in the year as holiday lets, and does not qualify as furnished holiday lettings Apart from letting fees and expenses incurred by the agents, can the ongoing running costs of the property (Co tax, utilities, repairs etc), or a proportion thereof, be claimed against rental income. Many thanks for any advice or comments.

John Sharp

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By User deleted
21st Jul 2006 17:37

Stick to business principles
For Schedule A, one must now read Case I so wholly and exclusively is the big test but bearing in mind that judges have tempered the rigidity of the rule by allowing expenditure which can be apportioned on a logical basis. I do not have much trouble with the "ongoings' and suggest a time apportionment where the numerator is the number of days actually let and the denominator 365. With electricity and/or gas, the standing charge can be claimed in this manner but one would have thought that, by reading meters, you could arrive at the amounts of energy used by tenants and thus arrive at a real "w and e" deduction from rents. Repairs are surely not logically apportioned on a time basis but my experience has been acceptance by HMRC of the latter. Mind you, if a specific repair was down , not to annual wear and tear,but some damage caused by the owners whilst in occupation, I would not claim the outlay.

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