UK Property Investment Blog

You may be wondering what the Government’s annual Budget report has got to do with property investment, but it can have a greater influence upon your investment choices than you think.

Namely on the size of your taxable profits.

What is the ‘Budget’?

Every March the House of Commons comes together to evaluate the UK’s economy, and discuss the Government’s plans for taxation changes – including the amount you will have to pay on income tax.

As an annual tax that must be renewed yearly, whatever changes the House of Commons decides to make to help boost the countries economy is reflected in the alterations they make to income tax.

Meaning if the UK is in need of more funding, the income tax you currently pay has a strong possibility of increasing in size. Even more so if your rental properties are making a substantial annual profit.

How can this affect investors?

As with all jobs, the passive income you generate as a professional landlord will be greatly influenced by income tax. The higher income tax is, the more it will cut into your passive income and vice versa.

For this reason, it is important to have an awareness of your tax liabilities. Especially if your property portfolio is meant to be a supplementary income to your existing job.

How does it work?

As a property investor you are seen by the government as being ‘self employed’ and as such must fill in a Self Assessment form at the end of each tax year in order to judge how much tax you will pay.

Compared to most ‘self-employment’ roles though, assessing your rental properties income tax is slightly more complicated.

The G20 summit may be 2 weeks behind us, but the impact of their £1 trillion economy boost is still on everyone’s mind.

Core to Gordon Brown’s and Barrack Obama’s discussions was the prospect of increasing trade finance and liquidity funds through the injection of £1 trillion into the economy.

A boost that Alistair Darling has stated will take some time before it is felt by the public.

G20 Measures – what are they?

Key to creating this economic boost, Obama and Gordon first plan to look into: increasing trade credits (allowing firms to collect bills at a later date) and extending the resources of the IMF.

The IMF (International Monetary Fund) are an organisation of 185 countries whose sole goal is to increase global monetary co-operation, secure financial stability, encourage international trade, promote employment and help sustain economic growth.

Through their increased involvement in re-stabilising the economy, Gordon hopes to introduce global quantitative easing, that shall increase the worlds money supply and stimulate more lending.

What difference will this make to the economy?

Whilst these are only the beginning of what shall be a wave of strategies designed to boost the economy; the success of the G20 summit has already been globally profound.

Over the last week there has been a flurry of positive actions within the economy:

In the US – the ISM Manufacturing Index climbed to a 4 month high
In China – according to the official Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), manufacturing output has begun to expand once more
In Europe – their PMI for both their manufacturing and services field rose

Yet of all these locations, the UK has easily experienced the most benefits from the success of the G20 summit.

House prices, stocks, mortgage approvals… March has turned into a productive month for the UK, bringing with it:

A 0.9% increase in house prices*
A rise in mortgage approvals of 38,000
The FTSE being 15% higher at 4,000

*Reported by Nationwide

And with the Bank of England declaring that lenders will be increasing credit availability over the coming months, homeowners have got a lot to look forward to when choosing to sell their homes.

Perhaps it’s time you get a piece of the pie?