Revenue’s treatment of Airbnb hosts, which caused consternation earlier this year, will lead to a new wave of self-assessed and completely unprepared taxpayers. That’s according to taxback.com, which is urging taxpayers to start getting organised.

The firm said that many of the thousands of people around the country who have rented out their home on the AirBnB platform will be PAYE taxpayers who have never had to file a tax return by the pay-and-file deadline of October 31 (Nov 12th for ROS).

Barry Flanagan, senior tax manager with www.taxback.com, explained: “Revenue has stated clearly that any income earned through renting out your room/apartment/home through Airbnb will be treated as taxable income and must be declared. The deadline for filing a tax return for anyone who rented out their property in this way in 2014 is Oct 31 2015.”

Flanagan added: “It can take some time to get the necessary documentation in order, so we are advising the people start the process now – because the penalties for non and/or late filing can be steep.

“Every year there are new people joining the self-assessed taxpayer category, not always just for the obvious reasons of being newly self-employed.”

In Association with

Taxback.com also pointed out that other people who could be required to file a tax return include anyone who has received income that is not coded into their tax credit certificate. This category can include:

- Anyone who has received income from renting out a property
- Anyone who has received dividends from shares
- Anyone who has received income from casual childminding duties
- Anyone who has opened a foreign bank account during the previous year.

Three Steps

Flanagan recommended that three steps should be taken by people likely to be affected by the impending tax return deadline:

1) Consider all your sources of income. If you have income that was not subject to PAYE or DIRT, it is likely you’ll need to declare it via your tax return. You should contact Revenue to see whether you need to register as self-assessed.

2) Consider what deductions may be available. If you have rental income, are you claiming all your deductions for capital allowances and expenses?

3) Consider whether you can claim any other reliefs or credits, such as for medical expenses.