8. Plaid Cymru Debate: Council Tax on Second Homes

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:07 pm on 16 October 2019.

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Photo of Mark Reckless Mark Reckless Conservative 6:07, 16 October 2019

No, I want to carry on, actually.

It just applies  to the hotels and B&Bs. The problem we have is essentially a lot of these issues go back to when council tax was introduced and there was a 50 per cent compulsory discount for second homes, and at that point, when business reliefs for small businesses were much smaller—both in Wales and England, they were the same at that time—there was a concern that second home owners were getting that 50 per cent discount instead of paying the business rates. That's now changed.

We had this Order in 2010—fine—but we updated it in 2016 and didn't take account of the changes that HMRC had made to the furnished holiday lettings regime announced at the end of 2010 and applicable for income tax from 2012 to 2013. And they made a very sensible change, which I think we should also make in Wales, and I'm perplexed as to why it hasn't been made and why Rebecca answered the question as she did earlier. Since HMRC looked at this and thought whether being let for 70 days actually was a commercial undertaking—if someone just had their second home, quite well-off, liked to have a second home, but would just let it out for 10 weeks just so they get the tax thing, was that a sufficient threshold? And they concluded 'no' and they said, 'Actually, you have to let out for at least 15 weeks', which is the 105 days. I think it's that bit we should be focusing on. It's very difficult to enforce on how much it's available for. It's very easy to say that it's available or to advertise it at a high rate, or someone asks and then you don't take the booking. How do the tax authorities know? Whereas, actually, the 10 or hopefully 15 weeks where you're renting it out to someone else as an occupation and you have to have income and payment to show it, that can be easily checked. So, what I would encourage Welsh Government to do—and I hope that Plaid Cymru would see this at least as an improvement on the status quo—is to adopt those HMRC rules for the furnished holiday lettings where they allow people to offset the interest and have other advantages that they don't allow to normal, longer term lettings.