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Imputed Rent




#In owner-occupancy, the Landlord - Tenant relationship is short-circuited. Consider two people, A and B, each of whom owns property. If A lives in B's property, and B lives in A's, two financial transactions take place - each pays rent to the other. But if A and B are both owner occupiers, no money changes hands, even though the same economic relationships exists; there are still two owners and two occupiers, but the transactions between them no longer go through the Market . The amount that would have changed hands had the owner and occupier been different persons is called the imputed rent. The effect of owner occupancy is therefore that
  • the imputed rents disappear from Measures Of National Income And Output , unless figures are added to take them into account.

  • Government loses the opportunity to Tax the transaction. Sometimes governments have attempted to tax the imputed rent (Schedule A of the U.K. Income Tax used to do this), but this tends to be unpopular because most people do not understand the concept of imputed rent.

  • #In modern economies, variations in the rate of owner occupancy are a good index of the overall wealth of the nation, at least across time within a nation. Between nations, variations in traditions and in tax regimes make such comparisons hard to interpret.


It is widely believed by Politicians that owner-occupiers are more likely to vote for parties of the Right , and such Parties therefore often take steps to encourage home ownership.