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So how to brief a property tax accountant so you get the best value, and there's a twist.

So let's imagine that you are in one country that's not the UK and you own property.

What you have to think about as, uh, getting advice from someone is that a UK property tax specialist, unless they have expat tax knowledge, they will only give you advice in the UK.

What most people need to think about is, "I need UK tax advice, but I also need to think about my tax position in the country I'm in." Let me give you an example.

So if you are based in Hong Kong, the nice thing about Hong Kong is that it doesn't tax you on foreign income.

It only taxes you on Hong Kong-sourced income.

Do you also have to pay capital gains tax in the UK, or is there an agreement between the two countries?

Simon divides stamp duty into three tiers.

So stamp duty is a tax on buying property in the United Kingdom.

Now, I'm going to reference just England because there are different rates whether you're in Scotland and Wales.

So we'll ignore those for now and we'll just focus on England.

So in England, you've got three tiers.

The first tier is a banded rate.

So the banded rate, the percentage of tax will increase depending on the property value, and it can go from 0% to 12%, or even sometimes 15%, but we'll focus on, go from 0%, which is a property of £1 to £125,000.

So that is an advantage to buying in your individual name.

What is your recommendation? Is there a software that you recommend to your clients? Can I use a spreadsheet? How people should go about it?

Listen, I'm never against spreadsheets.

I mean, in the 1980s, it shows you how old I am, right? But in the 1980s, I was doing programming in Excel, creating macros, Visual Basic, C++, programming in these intelligent systems.

For me, spreadsheets are finished.

There are much better systems out there.

I find that people use Excel spreadsheets because it's free.

But what people don't take into account is what is the cost of their time.

to section 24 that is on mind of many many many landlords minds i'm sure because it costs so much money and and it should be different what can we do or what is your what are you seeing in terms in landlords and what could they do to save tax are there any options any alternatives what

Section 24.

So section 24, mortgage interest relief cap.

What does this mean? For landlords, it means that you cannot offset mortgage interest costs or refinance costs against your rental income.

HMRC will tax your gross profits.

And I'm referring to gross profits in terms of you might have rental income, but then you've got refurbishment fees.

repairs, maintenance and letting agency fees, which then gives you a gross profit.

Now, that gross profit is what's then going to be taxed by HMRC and not the net profit, which is gross profit less the mortgage interest costs that you suffer at the hands of the banks.

Section 24 is even more of a concern in higher value areas of the country.

Simon lives in the south of Spain so like me he's an expat but he knows a lot more than me about tax and we're starting this series with an explanation of the non-resident landlord scheme.

One of the things that people will often think about in terms of leaving the country, like we have, is do taxes follow us? Now, when it comes to rental income, you have to think about, well...

The property is still in the UK, despite the fact that you have left.

So there is two tax events going on here.

There's the tax position for the property, and then there's the tax event for you as an individual.

What people often will get confused about or concerned about is the fact that HMRC are still chasing them for property.

money in the form of tax and a tax return.

Do they still have to fill in the NRL one or not?