This week our Star Letter accolade is awarded to Tony Silver for his response to the post: FSE: Portfolio rules hand brokers risk for not reporting landlord tax avoidance.
He said: “We are mortgage advisers, not tax experts or even worse tax collectors. It’s wrong to potentially blame us for the mistakes of landlords and inability of HMRC to run their own affairs.
“The answer is to make all landlords join a National Landlords Register, declaring all rental income which is then run and monitored by HMRC, rather than forcing us to do their dirty work.
“If you think about it, landlords should already be on the HMRC radar, due to the increase of Stamp Duty on buy-to-lets. Exactly why they should expect us to do their work, just smacks of laziness on their part.
“So now you have two ideas:
- a compulsory National Landlord Register;
- cross check against Stamp Duty paid on purchase of BTL and transfer into special purpose vehicles (SPV) or limited company.
“It seems fairly simple to me and far more effective than having a go at us.”