Ensuring eSignature Legality for Lodger Agreement in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Lodger Agreement in United Kingdom

the cost of living is getting ever more and more expensive and getting a lodger or renting out a room in a property that you'll be living in might be a great way to earn some extra little cash especially as the government offer the rent a room scheme which gives you an allowance to earn your rental income tax-free until a certain limit now this is something that i actually do so without further delay let's understand how having a lodger works and delve in a bit deeper in how the rent a room scheme works i'm kozan from financial madness helping you be better with your money [Music] so before we get deep into the topic it's important to make this clear this type of renting is very different to buying a property for the sole purpose of renting it out in this video we will be talking about buying a property where you intend to live in but you also rent out a spare room too this type of renting is when you get lodgers moving in as opposed to tenants in the first way that i mentioned having tenants requires a formal tenancy agreement and other legal obligations if you are interested in that method you would need to obtain something called a buy to let mortgage and i'll put a link below to a previous video where i talk through the pros and cons of buy to let now that that is cleared up let's get an understanding of what kind of mortgage you actually need if you would like a lodger for this case you can actually use a standard residential mortgage so essentially the same mortgage you would get anyway if you were to buy a property to live in without renting a room out now comparing this to the mortgage that you would need to get if you wanted a tenant remember this would require you getting a buy to let mortgage so buy to let mortgages usually require a lot more capital to get started as a deposit and i'm talking about 25 minimum you also don't get any stamp duty tax benefits if you are eligible especially if you are a first-time buyer so this is a positive for having a lodger rather than a tenant as residential mortgages are usually more affordable now there are a few caveats to this so let me break it down for you the first one being is that some residential mortgage lenders do have conditions that exclude you from having a lodger so be sure to read the fine print when you do get a mortgage but from what i could research this is actually quite rare and usually lenders have no issues if you would like to have a lodger the second is that if you are a leaseholder or you live in a shared ownership property you may also need to get your landlords agreement first and finally you don't actually necessarily need to own the property to qualify but if you are renting your property you would need to get permission from your landlord to sublet a room so as i alluded to earlier that if you were to go by the buy to let route you would need to organize a formal tenancy agreement with the occupants and for those that have rented out a place in the past you will know that this requires going through a fair bit of paperwork which leaves you as the renter with several legal rights to live in the property that the landlord must adhere to but how does it work with a lodger now having an agreement with a lodger can actually be quite flexible now the way that i do it is completely different to the way that i would suggest you do it now i'm only saying it because i do want to be transparent with the way i act and also if anyone is in a similar position to me they may also want to consider this but again this is not recommended so in my case because our lodger is a very close friend of ours her and my partner grew up together and we all lived together while renting for a few years before we actually bought this place we were very happy to rent a room to her on a casual agreement which of course can be seen as very risky but i would only ever do this for this particular circumstance otherwise i would strongly recommend that both you and your lodger sign an agreement before the lodger moves in that way the rights and responsibilities for each participant is clearly laid out and reduces the risk of encountering any disputes your agreement can include such things as how much the rent is when is rent due does the rent include other bills if when and how often can the landlord increase the rent responsibility of the living space you both share who is responsible for repairs and maintenance details of eviction notice or a fixed term agreement break clauses etc etc so there are a lot of things that you could include and i'll put some links in the description box down below to some template designs if you are interested in creating one so renting out a spare room does mean that you will be generating another source of income and of course this income is taxable however you'll be pleased to hear that you do get a tax free allowance as i mentioned earlier in my video the government rent a room scheme allows you to make up to seven thousand five hundred pounds per tax year from your module without having to pay any tax on this income this reduces to three thousand seven hundred and fifty if someone else also receives income from letting the same property such as a joint owner if you are earning within this allowance you don't even have to declare this to hmrc this means if you are earning 144 pounds or less a per week or 576 pounds per month or less then you are within the 7 500 pounds limit and you don't have to do anything you also do not need to register for the scheme as long as your gross receipt for the tax year is less than 7 500 pounds you will not be taxed as to what the definition of a gross receipt is hmrc says that this includes rental income before expenses and any amounts you receive for meals goods and services such as laundry and cleaning now to use the benefits of the rent a room scheme there is a criteria that you would need to follow so you need to either be letting out a furnished room to a lodger or you're letting activities amount to a trade so for example running a guest house or a bed and breakfast business you will not be eligible if the room you're renting out is not part of your main home when you let it it isn't furnished it is used as an office or for any businesses or is your uk home but you are living abroad so that is the criteria that you need to stick to but as i've already said there is no action for you to take if you want to take part in the scheme if you do have a logic and you adhere to the criteria that i've just mentioned then effectively you have enrolled cool so going back to taxes now so we've just spoken about if you are within your allowance of seven thousand five hundred pounds per tax year um remember this can also be three thousand seven hundred and fifty depending on your situation but what happens if you go above this allowance what happens then if you do go above the allowance threshold you need to complete a landlord self-assessment tax return and you would have to provide information on how much is actually taxable now there are two methods you can actually do to calculate the tax and i'll explain both through the use of an example so the example is charlie rents out a room from their own home and charges 175 pounds per week plus 300 pounds for utility bills this means for their gross receipts for a given tax year the total is 175 times 52 weeks plus 300 pounds which comes to a total of 9 400 pounds which is more than the annual allowance of 7 500. for that tax year charlie also spent 5 000 pounds in expenses for the lodger now expenses can include a landlord insurance letting agent or marketing fees accounting fees maintenance and repairs or direct costs associated to letting out property like stationary or toiletries so that is charlie's income and costs for having a lodger now they have the option to pay taxes by either of the two following methods so the first one is method a this is when you pay taxes on your actual profits so you take the total gross receipts minus any expenses or capital allowances now this way of calculating the tax is the default method so if you don't tell hmrc that you would rather do the other method which i'll explain shortly they will assume you are opting for this way and your rental income will be taxed under these rules by default so going back to charlie's example to get a better understanding they would pay tax on four hundred pounds this is nine thousand four hundred so their gross receipts minus their expenses of five thousand pounds and the tax rate will be whatever charlie's tax band is let's assume they are a basic income holder so they'll be charged 20 leaving them with a tax bill of 880 pounds so the alternative method is method b now this is when you take the 7500 tax free allowance and then you pay income tax on the excess earnings so this essentially forfeits your rights to claim any expenses but you do get the extra 7500 tax-free allowance so again let's go back to charlie's example to get a better understanding so using method b they would pay tax on 900 pounds this is worked out by 9400 which is their gross receipts minus the allowance of 7 500 pounds again assuming charlie is on the basic rate tax threshold they will be charged a bill of 380 pounds so it's a lot less than method a so obviously in this case charlie would need to contact hmrc letting them know that they will be taking the allowance as the method of their choice now which method is best to pay the taxes under is it generally based on the numbers a general rule is that the method a is better if the expenses and capital allowances exceed the rent-to-room relief limit of 7500 pounds and method b would be better if the expenses and capital allowance are less than the 7500 allowance threshold in charlie's example their expenses were 5 000 pounds which is less than the allowance so method b is the better option however if the expenses increase to eight thousand pounds as an example which would be more than the allowance threshold they would be better off going with method a the great thing about these options is that you don't actually have to stick to a single method each year you can actually switch between method a and method b year on year you just have to make sure that you are informing hmrc which method you are using every tax year of course that is it for today's video now there's actually a lot more that i could talk about when it comes to lodges and the rent-a-room scheme but i didn't want to make this video super long so i did what i thought were the key points for this video i may decide to do a q a type of video in the future so if you do have any questions do let me know in the comment section down below and i'll do my best to get back to you and remember if you did find this video incredibly useful i would appreciate that like button that does wonders for the youtube algorithm and the growth of my channel and remember i release a video every single week so if you keep up to date with those hit the subscribe button too see you later bye [Music]