Jean Galea

How Property Crowdfunding is Taxed

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So how does property crowdfunding finance work, first of all? We can use Property Partner as an example.

Property crowdfunding is a form of indirect property investment. This consists of the investment in shares of a company that owns, develops and manages property on behalf of its shareholders. Investors will hold legal shares in the company that owns a specific property. For each investment, an SPV company is created. Information on the special purchase vehicle (“SPV”) that holds the property can be found on the companies house website. Please type the SPV name into the search box on their site to find out more details.

Each property is held for a fixed term which is specified on each investment page. The investor hopes to receive a financial return in the form of dividends on rent received as well an increase in the value of the property subsequently shown as an increase in share price. The value of investment may go down as well as up and, as with all investments, you may get back less than you have invested. Indirect property investment allows investors to enter property markets without having to provide the full, up-front capital of buying a house or flat.

Your shares are held in a nominee account, registered in the name of Property Partner Nominee Limited. This account is ring-fenced from the assets and liabilities of Property Partner. You, as the beneficial owner, will receive all of the economic benefits including dividends and capital returns. More information on the nominee structure can be found on the Property Partner site.

Investment Costs are calculated using a First In First Out (FIFO) costing method per share, rounded to the nearest penny.

What income is taxed?

In most countries, you are taxed on capital gains as well as dividends, which are the two ways you can make money with property crowdfunding on platforms such as Property Partner and Property Moose.

With that in mind, you will then have to consult the laws of your country of residence to determine the tax rates for capital gains and dividends.

Please note that I am not an accountant or financial advisor, the above is the fruit of my personal research, and might contain inaccuracies. Before you submit any tax returns, I highly recommend you contact a tax consultant or accountant to check your numbers. 

How to Backup Gmail on a Synology Diskstation via GMVault

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In one of my previous articles, I wrote about backing up Gmail via Gmvault on a Mac. This time I want to go one step further in terms of convenience, and show you how to install Gmvault on a Synology Diskstation and have it backup your Gmail accounts. This will eliminate the need for your computer to be on and also saves processing power on your system, since everything is handled by the Diskstation.

Installing Python 2.7

The first set of steps will have us install Python 2 on the Diskstation, since it’s needed for Gmvault to run.

  1. Log into Synology NAS as an admin user (can be your own username if you are in the Administrators group) and go to Main Menu -> Package Center -> Settings and set Trust Level to Synology Inc. and trusted publishers.
  2. In the Package Sources tab, click Add, type “SynoCommunity” as Name and “http://packages.synocommunity.com/” as Location and then press OK to validate.
  3. Go back to the Package Center and install the Python 2.7 package (“Python”) in the Community tab. (Synology provides Python 3, so if a later version of GMVault is made compatible then you won’t need to do steps 1-4).
  4. Remove the Package Source and reset the Trust Level to “Synology Inc.”

Set up Folders for Gmvault backups

We now have Python 2.7 installed. Next we need to set up the folders to keep the backups in. Go to Control Panel -> Shared Folder. Create a new folder called Gmvault.

[Optional] You can also encrypt the contents of the folder by clicking the folder then clicking on the Edit button and then on the Encryption tab. Then click the checkbox next to Encrypt this shared folder and enter an encryption key.

Enabling SSH

Go to Control Panel -> Terminal & SNMP -> Enable SSH service.

If you have Security Advisor enabled it might complain about the SSH service not being secure if you use the default port of 22, which I didn’t bother changing as I was only logging in via my local network.

Installing Pip, the Python Virtual Environment and Gmvault

Open a Terminal window on your Mac and SSH into the Diskstation using a user with admin access.

Make sure you navigate your way to volume1 or whichever volume you will be using to set up Gmvault on and store the backups. In that volume you should find the Gmvault folder we created earlier. Make sure you are in that directory then follow the next steps:

  1. wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/gepipt-pip.py
  2. sudo python get-pip.py
  3. sudo pip install virtualenv
  4. rm get-pip.py
  5. virtualenv gmvault_env
  6. cd gmvault_env
  7. pip install gmvault

What we did above is to install the pip utility that is needed to install Python packages/modules, followed by installing virtualenv. Virtualenv is a tool to create isolated Python environments. It creates a folder which contains all the necessary executables to use the packages that a Python project would need. More info about it and how it works can be found here.

With those in place we created an environment for Gmvault and installed it using pip.

Setting up Gmvault

We are now at the stage where we already have Gmvault and can start having some fun with it.

To make sure that Gmvault has installed correctly, type in the following command:

  • gmvault -h

This should display the help for Gmvault, if it does, you’re good to go. Follow the next steps:

  • gmvault sync -t full –db-dir /volume1/Gmvault/backups/YOUREMAILADDRESS/ –emails-only –no-compression my_email…@gmail.com
  1. Gmvault will then prompt to open a web browser to grant OAuth2 access.
    Press Enter to open the browser – which won’t happen!
  2. Highlight the web address that Gmvault displays.
  3. Open a new window in your web browser and paste the web address into the address bar.
  4. Login to Google Mail and grant access to Gmvault.
  5. Copy the authentication token that Google will display and paste into the SSH session.

That’s it! Gmvault should now continue and download the emails.

If you’re curious about the parameters I used when executing gmvault, have a look at the in-depth guide on the Gmvault site which details all the possible parameters.

At this point you will realise that we haven’t yet automated anything, and the automation part is an essential reason of why we’re doing this thing, so let’s proceed with getting that in place too.

Note: For security purposes you can now disable the SSH service. It is recommended to only activate this service whenever you need it, especially if you make your Diskstation available over the internet.

Encryption

While you can choose to encrypt using gmvault itself, however I decided to use Synology’s own facility for encrypting folders. For more information about Synology’s encryption you can refer to this article. The official Synology guide is also a handy reference, as is their page on managing keys.

Further Improvements

There are additional steps you can take to improve this workflow, for example setting a a recurring automated task that runs, say, on a daily basis. This would make the backups work without your intervention.

Have you set up automated backups for your Gmail accounts? What’s your take on the subject?

How Crowdlending is Taxed in Spain

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Crowdlending is very popular in Spain, and I have written about my experience with property crowdfunding platforms in Spain before. For the purposes of this article, crowdlending and crowdfunding are interchangeable as they are treated the same for tax purposes.

Any interest obtained is declared as benefits from movable capital. This is pretty much the same as profits obtained from deposits or dividends from stocks. You need to declare interest even if that same interest has been re-invested or never withdrawn from the crowdfunding platform. If you receive dividends in 2018, you will declare them in 2019, always one year later.

In the IRPF form, look for box number 23, where you will need to insert the total amount of profits, without discounting any retenciones imposed by the platform.

If you are receiving dividends from foreign crowdlending platforms, they will be declared in the same way as the Spanish ones. Remember that in the IRPF you declare your worldwide income. There is no other obligation to comply with when investing in foreign platforms.

Most Spanish crowdfunding platforms will automatically deduct 19% from your profits and declare them to Hacienda. Once you access your Hacienda account, you will be able to see all your retenciones.

Income from property crowdfunding is classified as savings income in Spain. There are the following tax bands in place:

  • Spanish tax rate on savings income up to €6,000: 19%
  • Spanish tax rate on savings income from €6,000 to €50,000: 21%
  • Spanish tax rate on savings income over €50,000: 23%

You might have noticed that the lowest band is 19%, and that is why the Spanish crowdfunding platforms automatically pay tax of 19% on your behalf. If your income from such platforms is higher than €6,000, you will have to pay additional tax according to the bands above.

If you are participating in property crowdfunding on platforms that are based outside of Spain, they will normally send you the full proceeds from any dividends or capital gains due to sales of property. You will then have to declare the income on your IRPF tax form, that is due for submission between April and June of the following year.

Hope that helps you understand what taxes you typically have to pay after investing in property crowdfunding platforms.

If you have any further questions let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them.

__________________
Please note that I am not an accountant or financial advisor, the above is the fruit of my personal research, and might contain inaccuracies. Before you submit any tax returns, I highly recommend you contact a tax consultant or accountant to check your numbers. 

Bank Accounts in Malta – HSBC VS BOV

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Here are some of my notes on opening and maintaining bank accounts in Malta with the island’s two biggest banks: HSBC and Bank of Valletta.

Internet Banking

Although BOV just revamped their internet banking system, they only made it even worse than before, both looks and functionality-wise. HSBC offers a clean interface and an easy way to contact bank officials and get your queries resolved in a timely manner via the internet banking interface. I’ve previously sent messages to BOV from the internet banking that I never got replies to.

The internet banking key of HSBC is also much thinner and thus is easier to carry around.

Branches

HSBC is a clear winner here. Staff is professional and smart, and the offices are modern and well appointed. BOV offices seem to be older and badly designed.

Getting Things Done

HSBC has a reputation of being tougher with their requirements than BOV. Nowadays, however, both of them have strict procedures to adhere to, and if you follow the procedure, I’ve actually found dealing with HSBC to be a more pleasant experience and always very efficient.

Crypto-Friendliness

I’ve written about BOV’s ridiculous stance on crypto before.

ATMs

Again, I think the HSBC ATMs are easier to use and easier to access.

Conclusion

I’ve always believed that it’s always safer to use two banks rather than one. It gives you more peace of mind in the unlikely event of things going south. It also gives you the opportunity to compare and contrast banks and take your business to the one that serves you best. It might very well be the case that one bank excels in one area but is poor in another and vice versa, so this gives you better choice to getting the best deal/service.

I’d be interested to know others’ feedback, so just leave comments below and share your experience. The above is just my subjective opinion based on my particular usage of both banks’ services.

Should You Wear a Helmet When Cycling?

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I’m very safety conscious in general, and so I always liked the idea of wearing a helmet when cycling. However I recently came across a few articles that made me think twice.

If you’re a cyclist, read through these two pages:

My take is that if you live in an area where motorists are well aware of cyclists (e.g. Amsterdam), and there might be potential obstacles that can snag your helmet, you’re probably better off without it. If, on the other hand, you live in a place where car drivers basically hunt cyclists (e.g. Malta) you’re better off wearing as much protection as you can. The same goes for competitive cycling anywhere. A fall at high speed will always be more dangerous if you’re not wearing protection.

In general, we need to keep working towards more bicycle awareness and creating more bike lanes (Barcelona is doing a great job at this), while also designing car traffic routes in a way that reduces potential crashes with cyclists. For example, while Barcelona is always increasing the number of bike lanes, there are some areas that are real death traps.

The most common ones involve a green light for car traffic to go straight or make a 90 degree right turn, while the bike lane on the right hand side runs straight on. Around 80% of the time I ride through such bike lanes, I have a lorry or car turn onto me by mistake. While the drivers lack awareness in such cases, the way the traffic system is designed certainly exacerbates this problem.

 

Jean Galea

Online Entrepreneur. Global Citizen. Padel Player.
Founder of WP Mayor & WP RSS Aggregator.

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