Owning your own home

Well to be fair, an entire room would be 100% business, and then what’s the difference between a wood box on top of your house and one at the end of the garden?

Will 100% come back to haunt you when you come to sell/get audited.

Could you buy the Range Rover Evoque as a company expense and use that as your sex room?

it’s going to cost £75k.

wow okay, i thought it might be cheaper than that .. does that include curated Aesop level stuff or just amey standard laminate?

You’d be happy with a 50k build. Maybe even less.

oh excellent! thats what I had in mind AND I might be able to expense some part of it ;)

Burn.

(but also interesting.... is that Inc VAT?)

You’d be happy with a 50k build. Maybe even less.

Are you talking about @amey 's house or one of his "niche" cycling projects?

Yeah.
It’s well documented that user amey feels upvc windows are fine so it’s not a statement than burn.

all user amey's dropped bar MTBs are uPVC iirc

Financing even a garden office through a Ltd is very unwise - when you sell your home, even as your primary residence, you would pay capital gains (usually) proportionate to the land area covered (not floor space).

The CGT thing would still apply if it were a loft office, as the primary residence exemption only counts if the entire property is exclusive of business use. I have no idea what the pro rata amount might be though.

It's worth noting that a garden room would be a devaluing asset, whereas a loft would likely not.

IANAC, seek professional advice etc... you don't want to have an HMRC investigation opened on you. They are not fun.

Hood info, cheers. Sounds like more hassle than it’s worth.

more hassle than it’s worth.

My accountant said pretty much the same thing.

You can expense Aesop soap but not hand cream for some reason. I checked this.

Doing gods work. Thanks. 🙏

The lease has 980 years still left to run. It's as close as you're going to get to a freehold flat already.

Clearly not suitable for conversion into a cryogenic storage facility, then.

Just signed up for Land Registry property alerts, and can see that my conveyancing solicitors have an application lodged (a week after we completed) - assume this is regarding registration - but there’s also a more recent application (a week later) from Charter Court Financial Services, who appear to be a mortgage provider, though we’re with Nationwide.

Is this likely just to be the old owner’s mortgage folks? These recent stories of ‘house sold without owner knowing’ etc. are likely making me more paranoid than I meed be.

^managed to get to the bottom of this

Land Registry chap on the phone essentially knew the issue before I'd even finished explaining.
This is a separate 'DIS' application from the seller's mortgage provider to discharge that mortgage from the records.

He mentioned that this happens a lot and is the source of a lot of similar queries (read: panic/worries!) - so if you have similar issues appearing shortly after completing, that might be it.

Bought my garden office through limited company, couple of things our accountant told us;

1. It is being devalued over a 7 year period, so as long as you stay in the house longer than that it is then clear on the accounts
   
2. If the office is not 100% work use then you can get around the CGT issue, hence why I have 20% of mine for personal storage
   
   

TBH I think as long as you don't take the piss then you are probably ok with a home office in the garden, but wouldn't want to risk a permanent building (I looked into converting one of the barns here, but quickly decided against it).

If you sell your house, do you have to come up with a way to allocate a part of the sale price to the garden office and then pay tax on 80% of that in the LTD (versus a zero basis given full depreciation)?

If i'm honest I don't know, but it is not something my accountant flagged up as a potential issue, and we are in our forever house, so I am aiming to die here...

I assumed that after 7 years I could "buy" the cabin off the LTD for a nominal fee, but could be wrong there.

I assumed that after 7 years I could "buy" the cabin off the LTD for a nominal fee, but could be wrong there

Ah yes, that makes sense. The book value in the LTD will be zero and you could convince yourself that the “fair market value” of a 7 year old cabin is not very much.

Yes. Mine is 5 years old, so not sure what happens on the books in a couple of years when it has officially been devalued to zero, i'm sure my accountant will tell me!

I assumed that after 7 years I could "buy" the cabin off the LTD for a nominal fee, but could be wrong there.

this would be my assumption. it's not a permanent building and after 7 years its value could be assumed to be zero, so there's nothing to gain

^ edit: beaten to it

Yes, and I can prove it is not permanent, as I have taken it to bits and moved it (not that I would ever want to do it again!)

Can you transfer it to your ownership for free then start renting it back to your company? Probably

(golf club, Evoque threads here I come)