waider

I'm currently poking through listings on DAFT and finding myself somewhat perplexed at the amount of listings which state, "Rent Allowance Not Accepted". Rent Allowance is a government benefit amounting to, I think, up to a few hundred euro per year. I claim it myself, since I'm eligible for it and I pay tax and so forth. The only reason I can think of that someone might say they're not accepting rent allowance claimants is that they're not declaring their rental property to the government. The thing is:

• Last time I checked, the government had waived the requirement for the tenant to obtain the landlord's SSI number, so the landlord simply doesn't need to know you're on rent allowance;
• If you go around advertising your property as "No Rent Allowance", you're pretty much asking the Revenue folk to investigate;
• Various bits of tenanty legislation, such as the requirement for a rent book and what not, will ultimately leave a paper trail should the Revenue investigate post facto, with the added benefit that they charge interest on unpaid tax;
• If you, as a landlord, DO somehow tick off your tenant when it's obvious that you're not declaring your full tax liability, there's nothing stopping the tenant from casually reporting the fact to the Revenue, ensuring you get the rubber glove treatment (well, ok, I don't know how often this actually happens, or how likely they are to pursue it)

Really, I don't understand these people.

As I typed the preceeding entry, it occurred to me that my current plans require me to seek new accomodation before my current lease expires. Basically, I'm not paying out almost half my take-home in rent, and I strongly suspect the landlord will want to put the rent up again. So I went to DAFT, which is where I found the current digs, and discovered on logging in that they wanted me to update my profile.

With details of things I'd be interested in being spammed about.

Strangely, none of them are remotely related to finding accomodation. They've decided, as so many companies do, that now that they have a captive audience of some sort, it's time to turn on the firehose of unrelated crap in a bid to squeeze some more money out of what is currently a good, clean system. Of course, once you start adding the unrelated crap, your good, clean system becomes a mess, and you go the way of at least one of my previous employers - people can't find what they want on your website, so they go somewhere else. Sigh.