Tax: Short-term Lets

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is a good question. Whether it is Uber or Amazon, we are genuinely wrestling with how to capture the income due here. We have made some changes to taxing digital companies but, with the spread of technology and the sharing or online economy, all Governments will have to do more in this area.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister talked about people making these declarations as part of their tax return. However, if people do not complete a self-assessment tax return while still letting property, they do not fill in such a form. That is one weakness in the Minister’s answer. The response to a freedom of information request said that HMRC’s Let Property campaign produced just a fraction of the number of disclosures that HMRC was expecting. The Government estimated that up to 1.5 million landlords had underpaid or failed to pay up to £500 million in tax in 2010. At the same time, people on low incomes cannot find a place to live.

[Lord Bates]

We have done some work on that. The tax return I referred to is SA105, which is the self-assessment tax form. The HMRC Let Property campaign, to which the noble Lord referred, has encouraged 35,000 more landlords to register and yielded an additional £150 million for the Exchequer. It is not quite the full extent, but it is a step in the right direction.