Property Tax Insider: The Monthly Property Tax Newsletter

There are several personal tax reasons why a company owner might wish to waive (i.e., in broad terms, relinquish) their right to a salary or dividend. Those tax reasons commonly revolve around income tax (e.g., to prevent total income being pushed into higher rates, and possibly losing their personal allowance).       

Mark McLaughlin looks at the waiver of salary and dividends in an inheritance tax context.

Many property tax questions boil down to one key principle: was the property bought to keep, or bought to sell? A client who buys a flat and lets it for a decade is an investor. One who buys the same flat, refurbishes it and sells within months is very probably a trader. The asset is identical but the intention at acquisition leads to a very different tax analysis.
Parliament has never defined a trade beyond providing that it includes any venture in the nature of trade (ITA 2007, s 989). We therefore rely on jurisprudence, and HMRC lists nine resulting badges of trade at BIM20205 of its Business Income Manual: the profit-seeking motive, the number of transactions, the nature of the asset, the existence of similar trading transactions, changes made to the asset, the method of sale, the source of finance, the interval between purchase and sale, and the method of acquisition. 
 
Nick Wright considers the boundary between property dealing and property investment, the badges of trade that police it, and why the classification now pulls income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax in different directions.

Although the price tag on extra income is predictably tax, when the result is exposure to higher tax rates or even a reduction in net income overall, individuals tend to take notice. 

In this context, the April 2027 property tax changes may be the catalyst which galvanises landlords to consider whether they want to offload excess property income to a worthy recipient, such as a family member with a lower income profile. But how can this be achieved tax-efficiently? 

Debbie Reyland looks at how to transfer rental income effectively without falling into the many tax traps, ahead of the April 2027 tax increases.

The days of MIRAS (mortgage interest relief at source) are long gone, and the general rule is that tax relief is not available for interest on a loan to buy a main residence. However, there are exceptions, and if you have at least one investment property as well as your main residence, it is possible to finance the let property in such a way as to obtain relief for the interest that you pay on the mortgage on your main residence. 

Further down the line, it may also be possible to release equity from a let property to clear the mortgage on a main residence while securing interest relief.

Debbie Reyland looks at how to transfer rental income effectively without falling into the many tax traps, ahead of the April 2027 tax increases.