UK Tax & Expenses

[Julie4]

I'd really appreciate some advice on how to calculate expenses for letting out my room through Airbnb for  UK tax purpose(UK Tax). I've found the guidelines very woolly. I expect that my earning will go over the allowance for the 2015 tax year, so need to calculate what I can actually allow for expenses ie laundry, cleaning, bedding, bills, repairs etc this is what isn't clear to me and do I need recepits (as I haven't kept them). I'm using the Rent a Room Scheme as guidelines. Thanks, Julie

[Evelien0]

Hi Julie, did you find more information about this? I'm at a loss too. I won't go over the maximum allowance but it's very unclear on the airbnb website whether I need to mention my airbnb on my annual tax return.

Thanks,

Evelien

[Simon23]

From what I understand if you are under the threshold you do not need to do anything.

If you are over then you need to declare it on a self assesment tax return

https://www.gov.uk/rent-room-in-your-home/the-rent-a-room-scheme

[Francesca18]

you need to declare when you sell your house the square footage rented out to airbnb guests and pay 33 percen capital gains tax on this on sale in addition to the tax you pay over and above the threshold. It makes it hardly worth doing other than to create instant cash flow.

[James57]

Obviously - it should go without saying - I am not an Accountant (i.e. this is my reading of the various gov.uk pages I could be wrong).

The Capital gains is only charged on the percentage of your house that your rent out which in most cases would be very small (in a two bed flat likely less than 1/6) even then the tax is only charged after applying your capital gains allowance and letting relief. 

Letting relief appears to be capped at the lower of your private residence relief and £40,000 so if you let out 1/6th of your home to a lodgers (i.e. through AirBnB) you would only pay tax on 1/6th of the gain after the first £306,600.

Which is highly unlikely.

If you list your room (and only let it out) as single occupancy then you wouldn't have any CGT liability anyway.

[Louise87]

I'm trying to find an answer to this too.

We rent out a second property on airbnb, and a large part of my 'costs' are those relating to the changeover (when one set of guests leave and another arrive)

The sort of costs I'm talking about are the cleaner's fee, doing the laundry and providing a welcome basket.

I charge a £65 'cleaning fee' on airbnb, which pretty much covers these costs, - so I wonder if the cleaning fee is not counted as rental income???

Does anyone know the answers to these questions???

I'm speaking to my accountant today - so if I can get an answer, I'll post it on here

[Sophie1478]

Hi,

I know this is a very old post, but I am in the same situation.

I charged a cleaning fee, the cleaning was then done by myself and different family members, so is the cleaning fee still tax deducible?

Thanks,

Sophie

[Huma0]

This discussion seems to have tapered out, but given that the deadline for self assesment/tax returns is coming up, does anyone else have some knowledge to add to this? Luckily, I only started hosting in my home in this FY so don't need to factor it into my current tax return, but I'd like to be on top of things and keep the necessary receipts, as I'm sure would many others.

Any thoughs?