Is rental income from my primary residence taxable?

By Marc Sevitz · Updated 24 January 2014

Occasionally I rent out the spare bedroom in my primary residence. I'm not running a guesthouse - it's just a way of making a tiny bit of extra income and meeting some interesting people. I don't often have people staying - maybe for a total of 30 days out of the year. Do I need to declare this as "rental income"? If so,
1. What expenses can I claim against this income?
2. Where do I put it on my return? I'm already using the section "Local business, trade and professional income" for another rental property with long-term tenants.

TaxTim Marc said:
24 January 2014 at 21:53

You would need to include this under rental income as well include it with the other rental you already receive. You can combine it all together as one amount.

The expenses you can claim are the same as for the other rental property, only they would only be directly related to the income earned, so only those 30 days of the year.

Ros said:
24 January 2014 at 22:01

For the other rental property, I'm renting out the entire property. So I claim, for example, the full sectional title levies and municipal rates for that property as an expense. For my own primary residence, I'm only renting out the one bedroom and bathroom, plus shared use of common areas. Surely I couldn't claim 30 days' worth of sectional title levies and municipal rates? Let's say I rented out the spare bedroom permanently to a roommate - could I then claim my entire sectional title levies and municipal rates as an expense?

Regarding where to complete it on my form, my other rental property has a "unique identifier". Surely I can't lump other rental income under that unique identifier?

TaxTim Marc said:
26 January 2014 at 19:48

If you obtained the unique identifier from SARS then you would need to put "2" under the local business section and include the second income from the property in the second set of pages provided. You would have to apportion your rates and other expenses for the size of the rented out room as a percentage of the overall house and use that ratio to calculate how much the expenses actually are.