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Hi
I have recently started building a residential letting/property business and am trying (and failing) to work out how the CMS will calculate the child maintenance payments on this. So you are aware I am on Direct Pay.
My understanding is as follows:
- My ex will need to put in a variation to request that CMS look at my tax return and consider unearned income
- The calculation will be based on the gross profit made from the property business
- The gross profit must be more than £2500k per year
- CMS should not apply the 8% assumed income to the property because there is an actual income from the property
- The payments to my ex will not include the rental income until after the tax return is submitted.
My biggest question is (this is very landlord specific), does the residential finance cost get included as an expense as part of the calculation of gross profit? For those not aware, for tax purposes, the finance costs (i.e. mortgage interest) are applied as a 20% tax credit, so that earners in the higher and additional tax brackets do not receive the full 40% or 50% tax deduction. This is my biggest expense regarding the business, so it will make a big difference to the calculation.
I would like to know, basically so I can make sure I put the correct amount of money aside for the payments.
I appreciate that this is a very specific question, so if anyone on here is actually a residential landlord, it would be great to hear from you.
Hi Philsubscribe,
Yes 20% of the residential finance cost is included as a deduction when calculating your profit for your tax return and it's that net profit that CMS use.
What's the 8% assumed income you referred to?
Hi Philsubscribe,
Yes 20% of the residential finance cost is included as a deduction when calculating your profit for your tax return and it's that net profit that CMS use.
What's the 8% assumed income you referred to?
Hi @lou22 - 20% of the finance cost is deducted from the tax due, not from the profit. Do you mean you deduct the whole finance cost from the profit as though it was an expense or do you mean something else?
The 8% is a notional income that can be ascribed to assets someone owns. For example, you could have large investments or cash reserves, meaning you don't have to work, so would potentially have no earned or unearned income and pay no child maintenance. So CMS can say that they assume you have a notional income of 8% of the value of the asset and therefore should pay child maintenance on that notional income. There are some specific rules about it though and it's not exactly straightforward from what I can see. For example, the asset must be worth over £31250; your home is not counted; the assets must be larger than could be expected to be purchased from the person's salary... From what I read here, I suspect that the fact it is difficult means CMS might often get it wrong! So I was interested to hear from anyone else in a similar situation.
It is mentioned here: https://www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-worked-out/ask-other-income-expenses-included and discussed by a solicitor firm here: https://classlegal.com/news/challenging-a-nil-assessment-by-the-child-maintenance-service-part-two . There is mention of it here on the gov.uk web pages: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2018/1279/pdfs/uksiem_20181279_en.pdf sections 7.3-7.7 or if you Google notional income CMS you will find lots of resources. I gather this type of thing was removed from the rules in 2012, but reintroduced in 2018.
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