We may soon be buying a house on the coast , 70 miles away.
We have 2 years left on our shop lease and the idea was that we would stay with family for 4 nights a week. However life on the coast is so tempting that they have moved down there.
We thought about staying in a premier inn but as the bills on our current house are £400 a month it makes sense to keep it as our “city pad”.
I know we can get the upper level of stamp duty back before 3 years are there any other taxes we need to know about once we sell the city house?
For council tax purposes could we own a house each to keep that bill down?
For council tax purposes could we own a house each to keep that bill down?
It depends on the numbers of adults living there and their occupation, rather than the numbers of owners.
Each council supposedly runs discounts to their own rules to make advice more difficult
There could be a potential CGT liability on any gain in value in the property that you aren't living in. However this may not actually turn into a tax bill depending on the details.
For council tax purposes could we own a house each to keep that bill down?
For council tax purposes you could get a discount for single person occupancy. You'd be lying of course, and something something fraud something, but the books would balance on paper and would be difficult to prove otherwise.
I think an unoccupied property is free for 12 months. But that would be easier to disprove if it's not actually empty.
A lot of this depends on which bit of coast and the council.
They all have different rules regarding second home ownerahip but generally I'd be looking at only having one name on the deeds of each house - but whether that's possible depends on the mortgage situation.
I totally get the council tax wouldn’t work.
The coast house will be 750 k and work house will be around 550k. We’ve lived in the work house for 20 years so I guess that might be considered our main residence.
Would that leave us open to CGT?
