Find Financial Freedom

With the ever increasing amount of attention being bestowed upon the environment and our carbon footprint it comes as a bit of a surprise that the govt has not started to offer incentives to property developers and investors who are doing their bit for the environment.

The govt are quite happy to add a tax on the aviation industry to offset the carbon footprint caused by all the cheap flights we go on, but they don’t seem to be offering tax breaks to property developers who go out of their way to build more energy efficient properties, and property investors who do their best to improve properties, such that they are more energy efficient.

Luckily for me, I rented my property out before the 1st October 2008, so I didn’t have to get an Energy Performance Certificate.

Now, assuming that for my next tenants I do have to get an EPC. If my property turns out to be very energy efficient, will I get any tax breaks? What if it’s not at all energy efficient? Will I get taxed more? The answer to both of these questions is no, so why should I care about the energy efficiency of my rental property?

However, if the govt offered me an incentive to reduce the carbon footprint of my property, I would of course be more inclined to take an interest in it. I notice that the govt are spending millions of pounds giving away more efficient boilers and such to poor people in the form of the govt’s Warm Front initiative, so why are they not able to offer any incentives to landlords such as myself?

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed