You’re
eligible if you’re an individual landlord paying
income tax on earnings from a let. You can also claim
as a landlord with a registered company paying corporation
tax on lettings profits. Unfortunately, you won’t
benefit if you’re operating as part of the “Rent
a Room” scheme or renting a holiday home.
If you are an individual landlord, you claim the allowance
when you fill in your self assessment tax return so
you’ll probably want to have a chat with your
accountant if you’re thinking about using it.
You’ll need to fill in the costs of buying and
installing the energy saving products in the ‘Landlord’s
Energy Savings Allowance’ box on:
•the
UK property pages - if your property is in the UK
•the foreign pages under the section ‘Income
from land and property abroad’ - if your property
is outside the UK
The amount you enter on the form is claimed against
your taxable profits from renting out your property.
This means when you fill in your tax return you deduct
the amount you are claiming for this allowance from
your income. This reduces the amount of tax you pay
for the year.
But
get on with LESA; the allowance expires on 1 April 2015
If Britain is serious about moving towards a low-carbon
economy (as the government keeps saying we must be)
then incentives like this are useful. They need to do
more: raise the limit, because £1500 doesn’t
go that far. Many more landlords might be interested
if they could claim a bigger chunk off tax for real
efforts on improving energy efficiency. Just think of
the carbon emissions we’d all save even if we
only did the minimum!
Choose
an energy efficient boiler
More than 80 per cent of home energy use is for heating
and hot water - so getting a more energy efficient boiler
can make a big difference. Look out for the Energy Saving
Trust Recommended label when you're choosing a new boiler.
This label can only be used on the most energy efficient
products, usually the top 20 per cent of those available.
Insulate
your walls and loft
Is your loft insulation 270 millimetres thick? More
than half the heat lost in a typical home escapes through
the walls or the roof. Installing loft and cavity wall
insulation will reduce the heat escaping. Combined with
a degree of draught exclusion, it could also cut fuel
bills by up to £180 every year.
Cavity
wall insulation - Installing
cavity wall insulation can take just a couple of hours
for a typical three-bedroom house, and can be done from
the outside. Your building needs to have cavity walls.
You can insulate solid walls too, but this is a bigger
and more costly job to do.
Loft
insulation
- Loft insulation is easy to install - you can even
do it yourself. If you already have loft insulation,
check how thick it is. Adding another layer to bring
it up to the recommended 270 millimetres will save both
energy and money being wasted
|
