ARC vs. Tax avoiding landlord's registered address

Legal Legal - Real Estate & Housing
1

The old topic of landlords avoiding tax, but with a tiny twist… Help me please to check I understand everything correctly:

  1. Landlords wanting to avoid taxes is super common, lots of ARC holders rent this way

  2. ARC holders need to register their address, for this they need to show the lease contract (But not other things like ownership, land tax statement etc., what Taiwanese need to show when they want to register their address at a different place)

Q1: Here’s the twist: If the landlord/apartment owner’s only registered address in Taiwan is the apartment’s, I guess this would surely mean trouble for the landlord once you register with your ARC in the same address? In the case where I saw this, the landlord actually lived abroad, thus has no other address in Taiwan. Still, the agent seemed not to worry about two people registering at the same address and told the landlord he can still avoid taxes successfully…

  1. If a landlord only wants to rent to you when he can avoid taxes, that means you agree not to include this rental in your tax filing

Q2: Is there any risk for the landlord that you don’t stick to this agreement? I thought the landlord had ultimate control over this, since to include a rental in your tax filing you need some tax statement from him? Still, one landlord/agent combo seemed very afraid of this happening without their control, even after the foreigner moved out and got his deposit back already

2

One of my landlords reported the income and paid taxes on it. So I could claim the deduction with no problems from the landlord. All I needed was a copy of my lease contract and bank transfer statements to his account.

So technically, you could claim the rent as a deduction after moving out if the timing allowed it and the landlord couldn’t do anything about it.

3

Not just techincally. The landlord is trying to evade (not avoid) tax, and the “agreement” not to file is invalid.

If the tenant’s documents are all in order, there should be no problem getting the deduction.

4

Those bullshit contracts are worth nothing as it is illegal to not pay the tax.

However you need a place to stay so have to be prepared tomove out.

5

I doubt the people who note down the ARC holder’s address communicate with the people who do taxes on rental properties.