A little clarity from county Tipp. To wit:
The ‘rent a room’ scheme allows a homeowner to rent out a room, or many rooms, in their home to students, interns or professionals, TAX FREE, as long as they do not earn over the magical €12,000 per annum. Revenue’s argument is that in the above scenario the person renting the room is a ‘resident’ whereas under the AirBnB scenario they are a ‘guest’. The argument further continues that because they are a ‘guest’ it is now a ‘trade’.
To be honest, it is all very stilted towards city dwellers. We’d gladly be surrogate parents to a student or intern, if there was the opportunity.
Living in prime agricultural/rural Ireland, there are no hospitals or industry within a 40 mile radius. There is a massive exodus of students from here to the cities every Sunday during term time…. heading off to line the pockets of the ‘non-trading’ ‘rent a room’ folks.
Parts of rural Ireland are dead during the week… waiting patiently for the young people to come home again at the weekend.
Can anyone explain to me what’s not a ‘trade’ about renting a room to a student, intern or professional?
Well?
READ ON: AirBnB versus Irish Revenue (A Year In Redwood)
Earlier: Airé
(H/T: Lorna)
whats your problem, people leaving the countryside to go to college?
honestly, I don’t know how many ways this has been explained to you now, and in words of one syllable. If you have different people staying every week (for example) and/or you don’t live there yourself with them then it’s not the same as having a long(ish) term flatmate. This is not difficult to understand.
well it is difficult to understand, as you can advertise a room in your house on Daft or MyHome etc. as available for 3 months and rent it out under the Rent-A-room scheme, but if you did the same using AirBnB rather than those aforementioned sites, you’d be hit with a paying tax on it.
there’s rooms available on Daft for 1 month leases. I’ve seen the odd one for a couple of weeks.
at what point do they become a “guest” rather than a “resident”?
bearing in mind that the OP is talking about renting out rooms in their own home, and the majority of AirBnB hosts also live in the home where they rent the rooms.
It isn’t the site it is advertised on that matters, it is the nature of the occupation of the room. If you present the Revenue with the details, they will make a call on it. They should treat all short term rentals the same.
I think in this case the site that you advertise on does matter. AirBnB are now giving the details of the transaction to the Revenue, whereas with the other sites it’s up to the person renting out the room to contact revenue.
The principle of whether or not you owe tax is still the same though.
Isn’t the difference though that Air BnB takes money in through the transaction? They are conduit, handing funds, whereas Daft is just an advertising space.
+1
So what if there are rooms on Daft or MyHome for 1 or 2 weeks. How do you know they are not declared and the people are paying tax… I know, it’s likely they are not.
But, just because they are on another site does not mean they are getting away free…. If they get caught, they’ll be made pay tax, just like AirBNB.
actually a lot (if not most) of the Dublin apartments advertised for short-lets are owned and run by the same professional short-let company (I know this because we rented from them when we were moving house). As a formal business with offices, employees and quite a lot of properties around Dublin I assume that they’re tax compliant.
What happens if I, through Carzone.ie, rent out an A3 to a gang of AIB drones (on a weekend away) to sleep in? What is your take on that?
There is long standing legal principles on what constitutes a trade for tax purposes. The short answer is here http://www.revenue.ie/en/practitioner/tech-guide/trade.doc
But if you want more look up the Badges of Trade as well as the Noddy case in the UK
It is worth pointing out that the UK takes quite a different view on Air BnB
It is worth pointing out that you are a big poopy head.
you’re too charitable
Well, I never.
Well that’s a tricky can of worms that you probably shouldn’t open up , its well known that Urban dwellers tax take is used to subsidize all sorts to rural services , but thats ok we are a society
here is a small example http://www.irishtimes.com/news/consumer/dubliners-get-up-to-50-times-less-funding-than-rural-dwellers-1.1730130
+1
+1
People make a conscious decision to live in rural areas for the benefits this brings: space, air quality, proximity to nature, lower housing costs etc. The flip side of this is they don’t (or shouldn’t) have the same level of services available in urban areas, for economic reasons. It’s a tradeoff.
It’s entirely unreasonable to expect the government to subsidize rural areas massively so that they can have the same services as far more population dense areas, when their residents live there by choice.
*Rich* people might make that conscious decision when buying a holiday home Zaccone, and your argument applies perfectly well to them.
People who were born in rural areas, meh, not so much. Unless we have a law that says that when you leave home to go work, you are guaranteed by the state to find work anywhere you chose to work, in which case your argument would again apply perfectly.
And then there are civil servants who were decentralised in a political scheme that didn’t exactly take the real world into account…
…and people who have to live way outside Dublin and commute to work because of housing prices, and so on.
Also, I’m not sure that it’s entirely reasonable to have your healthcare or education be a postcode lottery.
That’s a load of rubbish Mark. If you don’t like the fact that you were raised in rural Ireland then take it up with your parents.
“That’s a load of rubbish”… Convincing stuff that.
Well, considering the writer of the letter is too stupid or lazy to find out why this rent-a-room to ‘residents’ was introduced, I’ll lend him a hand…. it was brought in because of student accommodation shortages in cities or the locales around the colleges, if you don’t live in a location students find convenient, then TOUGH SH*T.
I’m sure special rates around Race Week in Galway don’t effect the accommodation rates at Kiloglin’s Puck Fair…. nor should I get subsidies for my balcony veg patch because farmers get subsidies.
you be angry all ways posin’
no one know why folks is rentin’
takes one mome to be basin’.
all your rants is yellow facin
also too lazy to look up the meaning of the term ‘stilted’.
You be Stiltin
I ain’t cheesy
Rhymin’s milk – in
Singles easy
You be faking they’s be taking
air and b n b in
ain’t no loose
for the few who choosin
People in Dublin/cities would love to pay the same property price and tax as people in Tipperary are paying
Open a university in Tipp. That’ll larn ’em.
I think they tried that with something called the Tipperary Institute. It’s now amalgamated with LIT.
Winge winge winge. I chose to live in the shticks and now I don’t get all the benefits of the 1m+ people living in Dublin. Winge winge winge
You is talkin on fevers rural
Here be den the foxes mural
All is making bit and noize
Learn to play or join the boyz