First time landlord question

M

MichaelDonal

Registered User
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My wife will hopefully becoming a landlord later this year and renting out a place for the first time. Currently my wife is unemployed, but the place she'll be letting out is in my name.

It just occurred to me that rental income will probably be taxed according to my salary (given that the place is in my name) which is probably the way it has to be. I'm unsure of the legal ground here but if my wife is going to be looking after all aspects of the letting then it seems unfair that her income would be taxed according to my salary scale.

Does it make any difference given that we're married or is there something I should change?

Thanks.
 
If you're married and your wife's income is low relative to yours then perhaps you should assign all tax credits from your wife to you (please ask in the tax forum as I have no real idea how that works in Ireland).

If you own the property then the rental income is due to you. If your wife gets the income then it is a gift from you but there is no gift tax between spouses in Ireland as far as I know. It would presumably have to be income taxed first before you gave it to her as a gift but as above, you'd have her tax credits anyway.

I stand to be corrected on all this, just throwing it out there.
 
Thanks for the reply, would transferring the property to her name make any difference I wonder. I've already transferred her tax credits to me, so maybe that's all we can do.
 
As it's your house you will still remain the landlord, with your wife acting as your agent. The income is still taxed, no benefit to be got from the non working partner being the agent.
 
As your wife would she not be entitled to half the income from the rent and all the income for acting as agent ?
 
I know very little about it. But I would assume if your jointly accessed then you can't avoid this tax. Since its your joint income rather than her income. So it not really unfair. Unless of course you want to pay her a salary or hire her.

This might be relevant.
http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=65114

Then the cost (and hassle) of doing it might be close to the tax saved.
 
Thanks for all the answers. Looks like there's no gain to be made which is fine, I thought that was going to be the case just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something obvious.
 
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