The Generation Rent activist group has launched a lobbying campaign, giving a template letter for people to send to MPs ahead of the Budget later this month.
On social media platform Twitter Generation Rent tells its 17,000 followers: “The rise of AirBnBs is denying homes to people who need them. Taxing them properly will mean more #HomesNotHotels. Ask your MP to call on Rishi Sunak to close the holiday let tax loophole at the Spring Forecast on 23 March.”
The tweets include a link where users put in their postcode and receive a letter customised to their local MP.
There is also a request for users to allow the campaign to send it additional material.
The standard letter to MPs reads:
“As you may know, the rise of holiday lets have had a huge impact on areas throughout Great Britain that are popular with holiday makers.
“While the domestic tourism industry is a big part of the economy, and it is important that there is accommodation to support this, the growth of the holiday let sector is taking homes away from people who need to live there and damaging communities.
“I read that the Government has acted to tighten the rules so that second homeowners can no longer avoid paying council tax by claiming that their property is a holiday let.
“This is welcome news, but it is not the solution.
“The new thresholds to qualify for business rates will bring some funds back into local communities – but they will do nothing to make more homes available to local people.
“The tax system still incentivises landlords to switch from renting to local people to holiday lets so they can claim tax relief on their mortgage interest payments.
“If the government wants to help people up and down the country find a home they can afford, withdrawing the tax relief from holiday lets would encourage landlords to start letting to tenants again.”
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'It's not fair', said every activist ever, about anyone who ever invested in anything... 'tax them more!'
It always tax more rather than incentivise longterm letting.
ACORN are reaping what they've sown!!
Driving Landlords out of business MEANS fewer houses to rent. It ain't rocket science!!
Or the do nothings tell the doing something’s you can’t do that. Petty jealousy from those that talk more than they do.
Never understood why they're called "activists".
On the other hand their hot air could solve the energy crisis if we put them in a small metal box attached to the central heating - would probably be the first useful "action" they ever did?
Couldn't agree more Max. They don't know what hard work is. I've got a couple of holiday lets and the rest are residential lets. I sold one a couple of years ago and I'm selling another one which goes on the market today.. This will be followed by the rest of them. I've had enough of doing all the hard work, investing my hard earned money only to be kicked in the teeth at every opportunity by HMRC and activists galore. A dozen rental properties will be sold as a result of this. That's just my portfolio...I'm sure that there are many other landlords planning to sell up as a result of all this. When will the penny drop I wonder? Not until its too late, that's for sure. I'm out!
The conversion of historically long term homes to holiday lets is a tiny part of the shortage of affordable rental accommodation. On a national scale only a small percentage of properties lend themselves to the tourism market. Instead of penalising a few thousand property owners how about treating all landlords fairly so we can confidently invest in more long term homes?
It would make a far more meaningful impact if Generation Rent campaigned for decent and consistent treatment of traditional landlords.
1. Reinstate taper relief so we have the ability to hold properties long term without the risk of a massive tax bill purely because of inflation. Death shouldn't be our only viable exit strategy. We have already paid huge amounts of income tax, VAT and SDLT throughout our period of ownership of the property. Punitive CGT is just counterproductive greed.
2. Abolish Section 24 so our mortgage interest costs are tax deductible at the conventional point in our tax returns (not as a partial tax credit applied after younger landlords have lost their Child Benefit).
3. Remove the extra 3% SDLT on property that is for the long term rental market or refund it after five years of that property being let on ASTs.
4. Make all improvements relating to energy efficiency fully tax deductible in the tax year the work is done.
5. Introduce far quicker eviction for those who fail to pay their rent, maliciously damage the property or cause distress to their neighbours.
6. Ensure that the Local Housing Allowance is updated annually
7. Ensure landlords can contact a designated case worker regarding UC tenants by telephone and email.
8. Ensure landlords aren't charged Council Tax for short void periods between long term tenancies
If landlords were treated in a similar way to just about every other business there would be a plentiful supply of rental properties at a range of prices and standards.
Every time a new tax or disincentive is introduced the supply of rental properties reduces and rents increase.
As landlords we should compaign
for landlords rights.
I can understand some of what the article is saying if i am totally honest, i live in an area where the Airbnb/holiday let market is not as great as other places but i do holiday in Cornwall a lot, on my last trip i got chatting at length to a couple in a cafe (they worked there), who's LL was evicting them from a long term let to turn it into an Airbnb, and this was happening all over Cornwall and Devon, i do agree that if you own a property you can do what you like with it but i also understand that certain areas in the country should be viewed differently to others due to the unique nature of the workers there. The workers in Cornwall are often low paid and spend a lot of their wages on rent and utilities, if they have nowhere to live then whole industries will shut down and the community does suffer, so there has to be some kind of balance, and that is the job of the local authority to weigh up. The whole housing market really does need to be taken in hand and a long term view worked out to provide millions more affordable properties, until this happens then we will have this ' bun fight ' for decades to come.
Jo - Well said - agree 100 per cent with all of the above.
Is there nowhere safe now from these pariahs?
There is no area where the authorities won't go to take even more of our hard-earned cash from us.
It is no wonder people go 'under the radar', as being responsible and declaring everything is severely injurious to your pocket.
When all is said and done, we are the fools for being so honest.
Simon - You raise some good points and I do sympathise, but, if Landlords in the Private Rental Sector were treated fairly, they would not be converting to Airbnb/holiday lets.
I had to leave London and all my family many, many years ago, because I could not afford to buy there. If you live somewhere that is ‘sought after’, for whatever reason it is a common occurrence.
Twitter …. Eeeeeeurgh
Unfortunately the Genie is already out of the bottle on this one. I’ve done my numbers and even if they were to remove tax relief for Air B&B I will still still make far more money than as BTL. However if you gave me back my tax relief on my BTL’s that would be a different matter as I would make a reasonable amount of money for a lot less work than short let’s instead of making no money with the current position. And I would do it like a shot! I never wanted to do Air B&B these stupid policies made me. It’s just so odd that these people think that just using a bigger and bigger stick on more and more people all the time is going to help.
The filthy cockcroaches targeting hard working people again.
Generation rant
I wonder sometimes if the government is working from an ABC guide book on how to increase homelessness because as sure as night follows day this idea following on from outlawing section 21 and the already punitive legislation due to come in will cause private lets to become as rare as rocking horse droppings as was the case pre AST in the 1970s/80s.
I wrote to the minister abt abolishing Section 21..I pointed out that abolishing fix terms meant rent ontrols as landlord could hypothetically double the rent to get rid of tenants. The idiot Civil Servant who replied said fixed term tenancies are not to be ended (But section 21 is!) and no rent controls are planned as tenants can appeal to the rent tribunal if an increase is unreasonable.. (sic)... Seems like the blind leading the blind in regard to Ministers and their civil servants..
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