Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 269, 270 and 278 together.

Rent-a-room relief is provided for in section 216A Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 (TCA). The section provides that, where an individual rents a room or rooms in his or her home as residential accommodation, he or she is treated, for income tax purposes, as not having any income from the letting where the gross rent received (including sums for food, laundry or similar goods and services), does not exceed €14,000. If the gross rent received from letting a room or rooms exceeds €14,000 in a tax year, rent-a-room relief is not available, and the gross rent received is taxable in full.

An individual does not have to own the property to claim rent-a-room relief. However, the property must be the individual’s sole or main residence during the tax year. ‘Sole or main residence’ is best described as an individual’s home during the year of assessment. The income is also not subject to PRSI or USC.

Landlords are generally required to register details of their residential tenancies with the Residential Tenancies Board, including, for example, where the tenancy relates to a self-contained residential unit in the landlord’s own residence. However, the requirement to register a tenancy does not apply where the landlord and tenant are sharing the same self-contained unit, as would be the case with rent-a-room relief. The Residential Tenancies Board comes under the aegis of the Department of Housing.

My Department does not receive applications for rent-a-room relief from prospective claimants. Where a person believes that he or she meets the eligibility conditions, he or she claims the relief on his or her annual income tax return. Income tax returns are subject to verification checks by Revenue. Where such a verification check occurs and it transpires that an individual was not entitled to avail of rent-a-room relief, the income in respect of which relief has been claimed will be assessed to income tax together with statutory interest and applicable penalties.

As rent-a-room relief is claimed on a yearly basis on an income tax return after the year end, monthly data is not available. I am advised by Revenue that annual statistics on the rent-a-room relief from 2004 to 2021 are available on the Revenue website at the following link:

www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/documents/statistics/tax-expenditures/costs-tax-expenditures.pdf .

For the Deputy's convenience, the cost and the number of people claiming the relief for the years 2004 to 2021 (the most year for which data are available), are as follows:

Further details in respect of rent-a-room relief can be found in Tax and Duty Manual Part 07-01-32 at www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/tdm/income-tax-capital-gains-tax-corporation-tax/part-07/07-01-32.pdf .

Finally, I have no plans to provide for a register of claimants of the relief, or to pro-rata the relief as suggested by the Deputy.