Second home owners who falsely register their properties as holiday lets face a clampdown from the taxman.
The HMRC has revealed, as part of its Tax Day drop, that landlords will have to prove that they have made a realistic effort to let properties out for at least 140 days per year.
It is estimated that 60,000 properties are registered as holiday lets to avoid paying council tax.
However, HMRC says that 57,600 of these properties — or 96% — have been declared as having a rateable value of £12,000 or less, which means they are also exempt from business rates.
Treasury officials say that some of these owners may have milked the system further by claiming coronavirus support grants of up to £9,000 each to replace lost income. Officials suspect that they would never have achieved this income because they had no intention of letting their properties out.
