Since 2009, a director and major shareholder has been letting a study, the garage and an office in the basement to his own private limited company for \u20ac2,000 a month. The director wishes to form a single tax unit for VAT purposes with his companies, but the tax inspector excludes him from this. In the inspector\u2019s view, letting property to one\u2019s own employer does not constitute self-employment. The District Court took a different view, and the Court of Appeal upheld this ruling. The written tenancy agreement and fifteen years of rent payments were decisive factors. The director and major shareholder is therefore included in the tax unit.<\/p>\n
The director and major shareholder holds all the shares in a holding company, which in turn holds the shares in the private limited company. He is employed by the holding company, which passes on his wage costs to the private limited company. In March 2009, he entered into a tenancy agreement with the private limited company for the exclusive use of the study, the garage and the office in the basement. They share the use of the garden, the driveway and the utility room. The rent is paid monthly until he emigrates fifteen years later.<\/p>\n
According to the inspector, there is no realistic market relationship here. The rooms form part of the property, the other occupants walk through the garage, and the rent covers, at most, the cost price. The Court of Appeal does not agree with this view. In the case of a property suitable for both business and private use, all the circumstances of its operation must be taken into account, and these point in one direction: fifteen years of uninterrupted letting at a fixed rent. Whether that rent is below cost price or market price is irrelevant, provided there is a genuine link between the service provided and the payment made.<\/p>\n
The question remains as to whether the director and major shareholder acts as a self-employed person. Since the Van der Steen judgement, he is not considered a VAT-registered trader in respect of work carried out under his employment contract, and the use of rooms in his home for the purposes of that employment is not regarded as self-employment either. Renting out property alongside the employment relationship may, however, constitute a business activity, provided that objective evidence confirms this. Such evidence exists: a written contract specifying the property to be let and a monthly rent payment. In the case of such letting, there is no subordination whatsoever, even if the private limited company uses the premises exclusively for its business activities. Nor does the fact that the holding company includes the payment in the payroll tax return as part of the salary mean that the letting is a consequence of the employment relationship. <\/p>\n
Since 2009, a director and major shareholder has been letting out a study, the garage and an office in the basement to his own<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vwg.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}