I might be late to the HMRC party!

I might be late to the HMRC party!

14:28 PM, 21st February 2018, About 6 years ago 14

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I might be late to the party with this one. Yesterday I received from HMRC a letter/notice under Paragraph 1, Schedule 23 to the Finance Act 2011 from HMRC requiring me (as a letting agent) – a ‘relevant data holder’- to provide ‘relevant data’ about the landlords I manage for and the payments that have been made to them.

What this means is that I have to complete a spreadsheet detailing the full names of all of my landlords and their home addresses, their rental property addresses and the total gross amount received for each. At the moment this is being restricted to the 2016/17 tax year.

I have well over 300 properties on my books, making this a mammoth task, and the data they are requesting needs to be transcribed on to HMRC’s specific spreadsheet in the specific format they insist by 09th April this year.

I discovered some background to these notices on an accountant’s blog, but in brief, there are 900,000 landlords not paying tax on their rented properties, a ‘be-honest-and-come-and-talk-to-us’ campaign by HMRC proved fruitless, so now they’re making me jump through hoops!

Who pays for the ridiculous amount of time this will take? And whilst I may be required to provide the information, am I forced to provide it in their format (my software can run reports with various parameters but ultimately it has to be manually transposed). Some of my questions are answered in HMRC’s handy FAQ guide, but I’m trying to distinguish between legislative obligations and their wish list.

I’d be keen to hear readers thoughts on this action.

Luke


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Comments

AA

10:49 AM, 23rd February 2018, About 6 years ago

Sadly I think we are both right. I am right in the first instance and you are right in the ADDITIONAL liability that arises.

Sam Addison

16:38 PM, 23rd February 2018, About 6 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Asif Ahmed at 22/02/2018 - 15:44
According to Government website (https://www.gov.uk/renting-out-a-property/paying-tax) :-
'You must contact HMRC if your income from property rental is less than £2,500 a year.
But you must report it on a Self Assessment tax return if it’s:
£2,500 to £9,999 after allowable expenses
£10,000 or more before allowable expenses'

Monty Bodkin

21:21 PM, 23rd February 2018, About 6 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Sam Addison at 23/02/2018 - 16:38A large chunk of those not declaring were soft targets that weren't worth HMRC chasing.
Section 24 now makes it worth their while.
The highly salaried with a BTL as a sideline 'just washing its face' are going to get hammered alongside professional landlords.
That will be good news for rents.

Rob Crawford

16:50 PM, 26th February 2018, About 6 years ago

I would have thought that a report could be set up by your data base software provider to automatically generate the required report with info in the correct format req'd by HMRC. Makes sense especially if the report is to be requested on a routine basis!

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