There are two reasons why landlords overpay in taxes:
1) they lose their receipts and, therefore, don't claim the expense
2) they are not aware that they can offset certain costs as genuine expenditure
Losing Receipts!
Not keeping receipts, or losing them, is just like saying to the taxman ?I want to pay you more in taxes?!
In many cases landlords can give up a significant chunk of their profits to the taxman just by losing their receipts.
Don't forget, if you don't have receipts then you can't claim for an expense. This is because you have no proof of having actually incurred the expenditure in the first place.
The receipts that most frequently get lost are the ones that tend to be of a nominal value.
However, if you keep on losing such receipts, by the end of the year they will probably equate to a sizeable amount that you are not deducting from your profits. In many cases this can be the difference between paying tax and legitimately avoiding tax.
I always say to investors that whenever they incur an expense, they should ask the question ?has the cost been incurred for the property business??
If the answer is ?YES? then make sure that you keep the receipt and enter the expense in to your landlord software package.
Every good landlord software solution will allow you to track all of your expenditure, meaning that you will be able to see all of the expenses that you have incurred for your property business by just a click of a button. Therefore, using such a solution will help you to get better organised as it will visually encourage you keep all receipts.
Is it Really a Business Expense?
Next we come to the issue of knowing whether you can genuinely treat the expense as a business expense and deduct it from your property profits.
Enter, stage left, your accountant!
If you are unsure whether you can claim the expense then simply print off your expenditure list from your property management software, sit down with your accountant and go through the expenses. He will be able to confirm which expenses you can and cannot offset.
Also, any good property management software package will be able to automatically estimate what your tax liability will be. This is because if you are using the software package correctly then you will not just be logging all your property receipts but also entering your property rents as well.
Therefore, producing such a report will save you a significant amount of time in accountancy fees.
