Meg Saksida considers a recent case on main residence relief and the further guidance it offers on the quality of a person’s residence.
For a property to be considered ‘a residence’ for main residence relief (MRR) purposes, the stay an individual has in the property requires a certain degree of permanence. One cannot, for example, move in for two weeks and claim that as it was the only home that the taxpayer had during those two weeks, the home will qualify as their residence for MRR, attracting not only those two weeks free of capital gains tax (CGT) but the last nine months, too.
There are three important factors to securing MRR: quantity of time; quality of occupation of the residence; and (most importantly) the intention that the taxpayer is going to remain in the property, if not forever the long term, at least.
