Property and Capital Gains Tax Relief – 2020 changes

The Government love making changes to property tax, often in order to increase tax.

Legislation will be introduced in Finance Bill 2019-20 amending sections 222 to 224 TCGA. These changes will:

reduce the final period exemption from 18 months to 9 months (there are no changes to the 36 months that are available to disabled persons or those in a care home)

reform lettings relief so that it only applies in circumstances where the owner of the property is in shared-occupancy with a tenant

make some revisions to job related accommodation relief by extending it to serving members of the armed forces, who are required to live away from home and, instead of being provided with job-related accommodation, receive payments from the MOD under its Future Accommodation Model and uses those funds to pay for accommodation

legislate 2 ESC – D21 Late claims in dual residence cases and D49 Short delay in owner occupiers taking up residence

clarify the rules concerning the transfer of residential properties between spouses or civil partners – those rules will make clear that where an individual transfers all or part of an interest in a residential property that they own to their spouse or civil partner, the receiving spouse or civil partner will inherit the transferring spouse’s or civil partner’s previous history of use of that property, resulting in a fairer outcome

steve@bicknells.net