TRS on two houses

Hi
Woud be grateful if someone could advise on this please I will list facts/questions in points may be easier to interpret

• I bought my own house 7 years ago and have just this year reverted back to a non first time buyer i.e. reduced TRS
• I got married in December and my spouse and I are now building a new home
• The new house mortgage is in my spouses name
• We will be drawing down this mortgage in stages and have just drawn down a small portion to construct the porperty
• As we are living in my property we can only claim TRS on this mortgage? How do I go about nominating my spouse so that we can claim additional TRS as a married couple?
• As my spouse will be entitled to full relief as a first time buyer can we direct the full TRS to the new house when we move there
• Not sure what to do with current residence purchased in 2002 so no negative equity as of now....new house should be ready in December '09, should we rent current residence or sell
• Will we be entitled to any relief on this mortgage then ie on current residence if we decide to rent

Thanking you

baile123 said:

• As we are living in my property we can only claim TRS on this mortgage? How do I go about nominating my spouse so that we can claim additional TRS as a married couple?

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As a married couple you can only have one PPR at any one time so you can only claim RTS against one. Just write to Revenue to update your TRS details to claim joint relief. You might also want to deal with the other married taxation issues while you're at it. See www.revenue.ie and existing threads on this issue for more info.

• As my spouse will be entitled to full relief as a first time buyer can we direct the full TRS to the new house when we move there

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Once the new house becomes your PPR you can switch the TRS to it - again by just telling Revenue.

• Not sure what to do with current residence purchased in 2002 so no negative equity as of now....new house should be ready in December '09, should we rent current residence or sell

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No easy answer. There are lots of existing threads on this issue spanning the pre and post credit crunch climates!

• Will we be entitled to any relief on this mortgage then ie on current residence if we decide to rent

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No TRS but you can write off mortgage interest (on the amount outstanding at the time you switch it from PPR to rental property) against rental income when doing your self assessed rental income tax returns.