Au-Pair Rent A Room

Is it possible to claim rent a room tax relief from an au-pair? I had a look at the revenue web page but couldn't find anything to say you can't. If I hire her as a child minder and she rents a room off of me would I be wrong to claim????

TheRebelRam said:

Is it possible to claim rent a room tax relief from an au-pair? I had a look at the revenue web page but couldn't find anything to say you can't. If I hire her as a child minder and she rents a room off of me would I be wrong to claim????

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It would make more sense to just pay her less and give her the room for free,

but yes you could rent it to the au-pair, no problem.

I don't believe there is tax relief for renting a room in this scenario. Firstly an au pair is treated as a member or the family and would not be renting in the first place. Even if rent was being paid what benefit to the owner of the house could there be? Also au pairs get paid a pittance so how could they pay rent?

Apart from that would you be artifically increasing her wages over and above what she would normally be paid just so that she can return some of it to you as rent? As Bronte mentions an au pair will probably be considered part of the family for the duration of the stay and as far as I know things like rent a room relief and private rental accommodation now have rules requiring transactions to be "at arm's length" and not between, say, family members in most or all cases. You should certainly get authoritative, professional advice if you are not sure before attempting to claim this relief. Sounds unlikely that you will be able to to me.

If you rent a room to your Au-Pair or anybody else under the rent-a-Room scheme "SHE"(not you) may claim tax relief on the rent she pays (provided she is a taxable person i.e. earning more than €17600 p.a.) and you should include the rent in your end of year tax return (Form 11 or Form 12 whichever is appropiate) It will only be taxable to you if the rent received is over €7600 in the current tax year.

Are you 100% sure about that and that there are not the sort of "arm's length" rules that I referred to in my previous post? For example my understanding was that in the past a child could pay the parents rent and each could claim rent relief and owner occupier rent a room tax relief respectively but then Revenue closed off this "loophole". There was a long thread on this about a year ago if I'm not mistaken.

The change brought in by the Finance Act 2007 only dealt with children renting a room from a parent.

However, I fail to see the benefit of having the au-pair rent a room. She probably won't be in a position to claim the tax relief and the separate renting of a room may give her an option to live elsewhere, which may not suit the OP.