More than 18,000 people availed of the €14,000 rent-a-room tax relief in 2024, according to the latest figures from Revenue Commissioners.
The relief, which allows homeowners with a spare room to earn up to €14,000 rental income tax-free, was introduced in 2001 in a bid to ease housing pressures. It is soon to be expanded to include rooms let out in back-garden modular homes.
The numbers claiming the rent-a-room relief have been rising steadily over the last decade, with 18,180 homeowners claiming the tax exemption in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. This is nearly double the 9,240 who availed of the scheme in 2018, and a further increase on the 6,460 who claimed the relief in 2016.
The data from Revenue shows that the 2024 relief amounted to an estimated €47.3 million cost to the exchequer, up from €42.5 million the year before, when there were 16,580 claimants.
The scheme provides that lodgers are not tenants but licensees, so they do not acquire protections under the Residential Tenancies Act.
The scheme is set to be expanded to include people lodging in back-garden cabins under proposals set to be introduced by Minister for Housing James Browne.
The rent-a-room relief figures were provided to Social Democrats housing spokesman Rory Hearne in response to a parliamentary question.
Hearne told The Irish Times that the significant increase in claimants will have led to significantly more licensees living in “precarious housing”, and this is likely to further increase when modular homeowners are included in the scheme.
“These renters are outside the Residential Tenancies Act. As a result they all are at risk of sudden eviction and have no access to a dispute-mediation mechanism,” he said. With limited rights when faced with eviction or disputes, he said, these people often exist in a “parallel rental sector” into which society has little insight.
“The Government is looking to further expand this group with their beds-in-sheds idea, which will lead to some very vulnerable people being exploited,” he added.
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