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Posted Sun, 04 Feb 2024 16:32:26 GMT by
My wife and I own a property as Joint tenants and rent it out. As my wife manages and looks after the property, we would like her to take 100% of the rental income while we would each retain an equal share (50%) in the capital value of the building. I have been looking at Form 17 to ensure that if I follow legal/tax advice I would fulfil the requirements to complete form 17, excerpts from which state: When to fill in this form You can use this form to declare a beneficial interest if you hold property jointly and: 1) you actually own the property in unequal shares 2) you're entitled to the income arising in proportion to those shares 3) you want to be taxed on that basis Do not fill in this form about: 4) property held as beneficial joint tenants where you are both jointly entitled to the whole of the property and income 5) property that is not held in unequal shares … In order to achieve our aim the legal and tax advice is that we would need to change our ownership to ‘Tenants in common’ from ‘joint tenants’ (point 4 above) and would need to create a ‘deed of assignment’ which assigns 100% of the beneficial interest in the property to my wife but that ownership of the bricks and mortar could remain unchanged at 50% each. This advice seems to be consistent with Form 17 if points 1 and 5 above refer to the share of beneficial interest in the property (which is determined by the deed of assignment’) and not in the share in the bricks and mortar as recorded by the land register. Can you please clarify what the term ‘shares’ actually refers to?
Posted Tue, 06 Feb 2024 09:10:31 GMT by HMRC Admin 8
Hi,
Without a declaration of trust and a Form 17, HMRC assumes that any income generated from jointly owned property, such as rent, is shared 50/50. In cases where you own an unequal share of the beneficial interest in the property, you must complete a declaration and have a signed and witnessed declaration of trust, such as a deed of assignment or a deed of trust.
In this context the term “share” refers to your split of the rental income.
Thankyou.

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