UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi and Good Morning Everyone,

This is my first post having owned my first BTL for 1 year and have been using and reading all this blog has to offer. Last year i only had to do a tax return for March and only had half months pay for a new tenant so the tax return was easy to do.

Anyways my issue.......The bush between the the house i let and neighbour was hugely overgrown and taking over the garden. I decided i was going to get a company to come and remove the bush and roots and pay to have a fence installed. When the bush was removed it seems the actual fence was underneath and had been rotted by the bush over the years.

Technically a new fence has been installed as there was no way to repair the old one but i would think it can be reduced off my tax expense for end of year. Would that be correct or is this one i have to suck up?

I appreciate any comments that can help with this and will not be a one post wonder :-) I have loads of questions around tax (i manage the BTL myself monthly and also try do my own tax return if i can)

Any help of what its deemed an expense (laymans terms) and what is not will be greatly appreciated. I had a friend who can brick lay and he rebuilt a falling brick built shed however with him being a non business and couldn't give us a invoice as such (i paid him cash each day) i know i will have to suck that one up.

Its a minefield this landlord business.

Many thanks and enjoy rest of your weekend.

Any expenses that are incurred solely and exclusively for your rental business can be claimed against tax. If they're capital in nature (significantly increasing the value of the property) they're offset against Capital Gains Tax on disposal, if they're operational/maintenance they're offset against income (other than finance costs which are handled differently).
The cost of sorting out the hedge/fence is a maintenance cost that you wouldn't have incurred if you didn't own the rental property so you can claim it as a business expense. It's not capital in nature, because you have basically ended up with the property pretty much in the same condition - HMRC accept that doing maintenance work will usually have some element of improvement because a new fence will look better than an old one.

There's no reason not to claim the cost of the wall either. If HMRC query it (which is unlikely) you might have to be able to prove you really spent the money, but that's likely to be more embarassing for the friend who probably didn't declare the income than you - paying someone cash isn't illegal in itself (although helping someone commit tax or VAT fraud might be).

Super!...Thanks for replying jpkeates. Will add this as an expense on the property.