Rents (D.45)

Rents on land

4.72 The rent received by a landowner from a tenant constitutes a form of property income.

This heading also includes the rents payable to the owners of inland waters and rivers for the right to exploit such waters for recreational or other purposes, including fishing.

A landowner may be liable to pay land taxes or incur certain maintenance expenses solely as a consequence of owning the land. By convention, such taxes and expenses are treated as payable by the person entitled to use the land, who is deemed to deduct them from the rent that he would otherwise be obliged to pay to the landowner.

4.73 Rents on land do not include the rentals of buildings and of dwellings situated on it; those rentals are treated as the payment for a market service provided by the owner to the tenant of the building or dwelling, and are shown in the accounts as the intermediate or final consumption of the tenant unit. If there is no objective basis on which to split the payment between rent on land and rental on the buildings situated on it, the whole amount is treated as rent when the value of the land is believed to exceed the value of the buildings on it and as rental otherwise.