Until recently I was renting a room in a house owned by a 'friend' although I no longer consider her that.
She has a huge sense of entitlement, living off 'daddy's money' and delayed giving us back our damage deposit for weeks after we moved out until we really pressed her for it. The house was bought mortgage-free and she's spent next to nothing on maintenance. It has also come to my attention she's not been paying any income tax on the rental income - so our rent was basically her pocket money without her taking any responsibility.
I am now considering reporting her for income tax evasion, does anyone have experience of how to do this anonymously? Do you think she'd know it was us? I have found this info about tax requirements but nothing about reporting someone:
www.gov.uk/renting-out-a-property/paying-tax
She took zero responsibility for maintance issues and I did a huge amount of work trying to make the house habitable. Just to give you some idea, issues included;
- Central heating didn't extend to the attic bedroom or living room
- She ignored an ongoing damp problem until huge amounts of work needed doing, then ignored again when it turned out not to have been resolved.
- Our 'living room' was actually her bedroom and she dropped in perhaps two or three times a year, treated the place like a hotel e.g. leaving mess, nicking our food out of the fridge, bringing friends home at 2am and using it as a base to party rather than seeing it as our home.
- When I moved in I painted the walls and floor of the bedroom at my own expense; cleared up majorly e.g. chucking knee deep builders rubble out of a room where work had been done; clearing the yard of builders' rubbish; removing a 3 piece suite and piano from the room which was literally falling apart and doing so much to make it a nice room.
- She came up one weekend supposedly to damp proof the loft (something she instigated) - went in and found the light didn't work, instead of changing the lightbulb (when I offered one) she completely dropped the whole idea and just had a little 'holiday' using the house as her free accommodation.
- She upped our rent and stopped paying bills that had previously been included, for no apparent reason and without warning. In doing this she left us cut off from internet at significant inconvenience - rather than negotiating it and letting us put the internet account into our names.
- She promised to refurb the kitchen for the entire time I lived there, and refused to fit a lock to the back door because this refurb was going to be done. She never did the refurb and I fitted a lock at my own expense as didn't want to live in a house without a lock.
- Being so disorganised with household bills from periods when she and other tenants had lived there, that we ended up paying hundreds of pounds because the alternative was getting taken to court.
