You sit at the computer, logged in to Air B’n’B or similar, and block out a week in May, a couple of weeks in July, a couple in October and the Christmas period. Half a dozen weeks put aside for you and the family to go and stay in your holiday let.
You pay all the bills, and it’s in a cracking place, so why not? On top of this you will also nip over any Friday night that comes round where there isn’t a book in over the weekend. It would have been empty otherwise! The reality is of course that you only manage to get there for two weeks and no weekends at all. Never mind. All good.
You pull your information together for your tax return. All of those little packets of biscuits and bottles you gave away – allowable in full. Cleaner for each turnaround after a paying holiday maker stayed – allowable in full. Booking fees for the platform – allowable in full. You’re flying!
Gas, electricity, insurance, mortgage interest etc – allowable in part. Wait. Part? Why is that then? And what does a part actually mean? So hopefully part of this is obvious but the other part might not be. So the two weeks you got there, and the two weeks you managed have to be done at your own cost. What that means is that 2/52 of all of those general overheads are private use. After all why should the taxpayer subsidise your holidays? Make sense! That it?
Nope. The weeks you blocked out on the booking system are private as well. Even though you didn’t go. You might not have expected that. What is it though? Well quite simply during those spells you weren’t trying to get rents in. As a result the share for the other four weeks you blocked out are all private as well.
And yes, this is exactly the type of thing that HMRC will easily be able to check while building their files…
The tip here then is to only block the weeks out you are absolutely going! Even then depending on what it costs to run, coupled with the loss of rent you would otherwise have charged, maybe going to your own place is costing you more than you think.
Oh and don’t even get me started on the rules if the property is in a company 😳