Sir, – Further to "Residential landlords paid tax on only 63% per cent of rental income" (Business, December 30th), businesses pay tax on their net income, as do landlords. They are obliged to keep records of all expenses incurred in the running of their business and have them available for the taxman to inspect. You refer to allowable expenses while not highlighting that, for example, property tax is not an allowable expense yet it reduces the net profit of the landlord. It is a double tax on landlords.
In your last paragraph you state that, on average, a landlord with a gross income of €24,00 per year claims €8,800 in expenses. Does this reflect the typical situation? I think not.
The Government has put in situ various schemes to encourage landlords to make fundamental improvements to their properties in order to bring them up to a reasonable standard, and this large expenditure by a small proportion of landlords causes a misrepresentation and thus misinterpretation of the figure for average expenses and deductions.
Perhaps the figure for the mode and median might reflect more accurately the typical figure for expenses submitted by the majority of landlords.
If the Minister of Finance were to base his decision-making regarding taxation on average figures, then I fear that he would not be making decisions that would reflect one of the basic principles of a taxation system, fairness. – Yours, etc,
JO TRESTON,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.