Latest news with #MattHutchinson
Daily Mail
02-08-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
The landlord tax trap stopping home owners renting out their spare rooms
Homeowners looking to earn some extra cash from renting out a room to a lodger are being snared by a tax trap. Households can let out a furnished room and earn up to £7,500 a year tax-free without notifying the tax office. But the allowance hasn't risen in nine years, despite rental prices shooting up in that time as the cost of living has risen. Housing expert Matt Hutchinson, director of house share site SpareRoom, says the freeze on the Rent a Room Scheme's tax-free threshold is putting off would-be landlords. He says that if just one in 20 of Britain's spare rooms were rented out to lodgers, it would add the equivalent of a city the size of Birmingham to the nation's housing stock. Mr Hutchinson says that if the threshold had risen in line with RPI inflation – which includes costs associated with home ownership – it would now be £11,500 and cover 94 per cent of UK postcode areas. He also thinks a higher threshold would mean more rooms coming on to the market. Among those worst affected by the freeze are homeowners for whom lodgers are a useful source of extra income, as the cost of living and mortgage rate rises have added substantially to bills. Alex Hobbs, 29, a manager in the construction industry, took in a lodger when he was looking for a way to help cover his mortgage on a two-bedroom flat in London after the pandemic lockdown. But the tax threshold – and the cost of getting an accountant to check he was correctly declaring his income – has now put him off. He says: 'The cost of living had hit all my different household bills. Interest rates had gone up on residential mortgages, so I was giving myself that security and peace of mind that I wouldn't be stretched too thin. 'So I decided it would be sensible to rent out a spare room. He [the lodger] was quite sociable, so we became friendly, and it was quite nice because it gave me a bit of company sometimes.' Mr Hobbs says that renting out a room covered half his mortgage payments, and the tax-free allowance, which works out at £625 per month, was a major benefit. 'I was charging £750 a month and then he paid separately for a share of the bills. Then I realised you had to pay tax on rent over £625 a month. 'I thought the allowance was quite low. I had to get an accountant and pay their fees, and it was a lot of work. I know that other tax allowances have been frozen too, but the personal income tax allowance has at least changed in the last ten years, and the lodger allowance hasn't.' Mr Hobbs has now moved further out of London and into a one-bedroom home, so he no longer has a spare room to rent. However, he says he would have considered buying a bigger property and relying on one or two lodgers if it hadn't meant completing a tax return each year. The Rent a Room scheme is open to households who let a furnished room in their main home to a lodger. Even tenants can make use of it, although many leases can forbid sub-letting and require special permission from the landlord. Mr Hutchinson campaigned for the threshold to be lifted from £4,250, or £354 a month, to the higher rate in 2016. At this point £7,500 covered average room rents everywhere except London. But data from SpareRoom shows average room rents have increased by 21 per cent across the UK, and by 34 per cent in London over the past nine years. Mr Hutchinson says: 'It's not just the money – people can be really scared about tax and adding complexity to their finances. 'If you look at Office for National Statistics data and the number of houses in England and Wales with one or two spare rooms, there's about 26 million. So even renting out 5 per cent of those rooms would create a city the size of Birmingham but spread out across the country.' Frozen income tax thresholds mean the bill for breaching the allowance can be larger if someone has been dragged into a higher tax bracket by the extra income. Laura Suter, director of personal finance at the investment platform AJ Bell, says: 'It means that, for some, once this tax and other costs of renting a room are taken into account, there isn't sufficient incentive for them to do it.' The question of hiking the tax-free allowance has been raised in Parliament, most recently in February when Baroness Watkins of Tavistock asked if the Government had considered raising it. Replying on behalf of the Treasury, Labour peer Lord Livermore agreed the scheme 'reduces and simplifies the tax and administration burden for those affected and has taken some taxpayers out of self-assessment entirely'. However, he added a rise was not on the cards, saying: 'At present, the Government believes that the Rent a Room Scheme threshold is set at an appropriate level.'
Daily Mail
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Award-winning kids' TV show announces cancellation with heart-wrenching video of lead star sobbing - as fans weep 'this broke my heart!'
An award-winning kids' TV show announced that it has been cancelled with a heart-wrenching video of the lead star sobbing - and fans have weeped 'this has broken my heart!' The Tiny Chef Show - created by Rachel Larsen, Ozlem Aturk and Adam Reid - hit Nickelodeon in 2022. The animated series follows the life of Tiny Chef (voice by Matt Hutchinson), who speaks his very own language, creating a selection of tasty dishes in his tree stump. Over the past three years, the programme has aired 41 episodes over three seasons. But unfortunately that's where it ends as they have decided to cancel the series - and they announced the news with an adorable, yet heartbreaking video of Tiny Chef getting the call. Tiny Chef answers the phone and says: 'Hey Nickelodeon. How are you doing? You ready to cook up some more episodes?! 'I got a million ideas...' Not hearing what is said to him on the other end of the line, Tiny Chef gasps and replies: 'Cancelled? What do you mean cancelled? 'But listen... Ruby's had training and she'll behave on set. I promise. I have ideas that will blow your minds!' He continues: 'But we won an Emmy... and what about Rob? And Jen? Kate? Patty? MK? Leah? All my friends... 'I understand. I love you too. Bye.' The Tiny Chef tries to carry on as normal and continue cleaning, but bursts into tears and goes to sit down on his bed. Many rushed to the comments section on TikTok to share their devastation over the news. 'When tinychef cried, I cried too.' Many rushed to the comments on the TikTok post to share how heartbroken they are that The Tiny Chef won't be returning 'I don't know him but you did not just make him cry like that, you should apologize to him.' 'Nickelodeon - big mistake. HUGE. YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT TINY CHEF.' 'Oh this literally broke my heart and it's only 9am.' 'Oh nooooo!! we love you Tiny Chef. Netflix... HELP.' 'omg I'm sobbing over this.' 'That cry at the end.' Netflix's official synopsis reads: 'A pint-sized chef teaches kids the joys of vegetarian cooking and friendship while joking and dancing with his best buddies inside his tree-stump home.' Odessa A'zion, RuPaul, Akan Cumming, Nicole Byer, Amy Sedaris, Rebel Wilson, Michael-Leon Wooley and Alasaid Saunders also play voices on the show. Tiny Chef's official website stated: 'Dear Cheffers! 'Tiny Chef and the team need your help now more than ever! 'The Tiny Chef Show on Nickelodeon has officially been cancelled (WE KNOW!!!) making it impossible to film and share Chef's journey without your support. 'Many of you have said that you would die for Tiny Chef, we don't need all that(!!!) but we do need crowd funding to keep going. 'Please consider joining the Fan Club by clicking the link below.'
Business Times
18-06-2025
- Business
- Business Times
London's sky-high prices thin the ranks of room-to-rent seekers
[LONDON] The number of people looking for a room to rent in London has continued to slide, data from a property search website show, in a sign that high rents are pushing even that modest goal out of reach for many residents. The cost of renting a room in the capital has held above £1,000 (S$1,726) a month since 2022, when property seekers idled by Covid-19 flooded back into the market as the economy reopened. But the number of would-be flat sharers has declined steadily since and last month hit 57,600, a drop of about 6,500 from a year before, according to figures shared by SpareRoom, a rental website. That's half as many as there were at the peak in September 2022 and marked the slowest May – one of the busiest months for house hunters – since 2021. The drop comes as the outlook is being darkened by rising bills, a deteriorating labour market and the US trade war, which is showing some signs of undermining confidence in the economy. Some of the decline in room-rental demand may be due to prospective homeowners resuming their searches as the Bank of England lowers interest rates. But the larger driver is likely the fact that many young people are opting for the cheaper option of living with their parents instead: An analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed that almost a third of UK residents aged 25 to 29 lived at home in 2024, up from just one in five in 2007. That may reflect the worsening job prospects for some young people as employers cut back on entry-level positions and recent tax hikes exert a drag on hiring in the hospitality sector. SpareRoom said that 40 per cent of those under 25 spend more than half of their income on rent, well above what's considered affordable. 'All those people in their 20s who would be driving up demand just aren't there,' said Matt Hutchinson, director at SpareRoom. 'Many young people can't afford to rent or save the required deposit on today's starting salaries so they have no choice but to stay put.' BLOOMBERG
