Homeowners could be in line for extra tax relief for renting out rooms, after the Taoiseach raised the possibility of changes to the rent-a-room scheme.<\/p>\n
Miche\u00e1l Martin has suggested \u201cexpanding\u201d the existing rent-a-room scheme, which currently allows homeowners to receive up to \u20ac14,000 tax-free per year for providing a room to a lodger.<\/p>\n
While the Government is focused on delivering new housing supply, Mr Martin said it is also considering ways of \u201csweating the existing housing stock\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rent-a-room scheme has been very effective for student accommodation and, more generally, where somebody who\u2019s living alone in a three-bedroom house can rent out a room and get tax relief.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s something that we should consider expanding in my view because I\u2019m not sure we have sweated the existing asset enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if this could include increasing the tax relief available to people or increasing the number of rooms rentable, Mr Martin said that it was something that should be discussed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are the kind of initiatives that we are looking at.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Martin said the rent-a-room scheme has been effective to \u201cbridge the gap\u201d to purpose-built student accommodation.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mr Martin said Fianna F\u00e1il would not be pushing for a \u20ac20,000 increase in the Help-to-Buy relief, saying the party would focus on increasing capital allocation to the Department of Housing.<\/p>\n
It comes after T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris ruled out any increase to the Help-to-Buy scheme.<\/p>\n
Despite this, Mr Martin added that removing stamp duty for first-time buyers was an issue Fianna F\u00e1il has put on the table, despite repeated efforts by Mr Harris to reject the proposal.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin was also questioned if the public could expect to see a substantial cut to childcare fees, telling reporters that the Government \u201cwant to alleviate pressures on families with children\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Harris suggested that the tax package may grow slightly, “if we decide to do other discretionary taxes or indeed a bank levy or the likes,” but he said his focus will be on income tax changes.<\/p>\n
Mr Harris said his job is to “follow the programme for government” and he does not intend to bring forward any new taxation measures around housing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Homeowners could be in line for extra tax relief for renting out rooms, after the Taoiseach raised the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[166626,72,807,61,60],"class_list":["post-630242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-budget-2027","tag-business","tag-housing","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}