If you are a Minnesota landlord you’ll need to get going on your Minnesota Certificate Of Rent Paid forms. I completed mine today. In order to knock these out quickly and meet the CRP deadline of 1/31/2012 you’ll need to have some information handy to properly fill out the MN CRP Form. First off, you can get the form at the Minnesota Certificate Of Rent Paid website. Its an online PDF form you can easily fill out, but not save. This is all the more reason you’ll need to have the right information at your fingertips so you can complete the online form and print. So what information is needed to fill out a CRP form?
Tenant name and address.
Your name and address or your company or agent name and address.
Property ID or PID as found in the tax records of your county.
Total amount of rent received from your tenant in 2011.
If any of the rent was paid by the government or special programs you’ll need to note that on the form.
You’ll need to know the exact move in and move out date of your tenant.
You’ll need to know how many months your tenant rented the place for.
That’s pretty much it. If you’ve gathered this information, you can fill out the Minnesota CRP form in about 10 minutes. Just print and sign and mail to your tenant.
Note, one gotcha to be aware of. Minnesota requires you send a certificate of rent paid to each adult in the household. If a couple is married they count as one adult. If you are sending more than one CRP out you must divide the rent paid equally among each CRP recipient. Divide equally even if they did not pay equal rent, the law surrounding the certificate of rent paid does not care about this. Be sure to get your CRP’s out in January as you will face a penalty of $100 per late CRP. Since they are so quickly to create and send there is no excuse to be late on your CRP’s.
By January 31 2012, you should receive your Certificate Of Rent Paid which entitles you to apply for your renters refund. What is the Minnesota Renters Refund? It’s the recognition by the state of Minnesota that when you pay rent, you are paying your landlords property tax. The state of Minnesota feels you should receive a renters refund based on the property tax portion of the rent you paid. Your landlord will send you a Certificate Of Rent Paid which will tell you how much rent you paid and will multiply it by .19 or 19% of the rent you paid. This is the amount of rent the state of Minnesota will apply towards your renters refund. Don’t assume that the actual amount of rent you paid will be used in calculating your renter refund. Check out our page on Certificate Of Rent Paid for why your rent refund may be calculated by an even split of rent paid by the total household.
Minnesota form M1PR is what you will use to request your renters refund. The ability to receive this refund is based on your household income and the amount of rent paid listed on the Certificate Of Rent Paid.
As of 2011 the max renters refund is $1430.00 this is based on the renters household income and dependants.
This year’s Minnesota Renters credit provides a tax refund to about 275000 households. The maximum benefits are reaped by the Senior citizens and people with disabilities who make up to 29% recipients. The current budget for Minnesota Renters Credit is a boon to low income households and has granted a cut by 21%. The Senate and House Tax Committee did not make any changes in the omnibus tax bills. So the final draft of the omnibus tax bill(HF 3149) had no changes.
The non profit organizations were quick to react to this. They drafted a letter to the governor concerning their views. They have specified these cuts will harm the people across the state including seniors and persons with disabilities and also other low income groups. But the governor backs up the deal specifying that the property taxes were decreased in 2001 for most owners. Renters did not reap any benefits out of this.
Rental property taxes remain one of the most regressive taxes in Minnesota. When the state is facing an economic downturn, the lower income group could not afford to pay the taxes. Hence about 100 organizations signed a letter and had sent it to the governor. Their concerns must be heard with great care by the administrators.
By January 31, 2012 landlords should have sent out the Minnesota Certificate Of Rent Paid to their tenants. The MN Certificate Of Rent Paid provides the tenant the form and breakdown of rent paid which they can use to obtain their rent credit or renters refund when they do their taxes. This is commonly known in Minnesota as the renters refund. The MN Certificate Of Rent Paid form used by your landlord to send you this information. The Certificate Of Rent Paid can be found at the MN CRP 2011 website. There are a few things that both landlords and tenants should know about the 2011 Certificate Of Rent Paid in Minnesota. Failure to adhere to the MN policies could result in fines for the landlord.
A Minnesota Certificate Of Rent Paid form should be sent to each married couple and unmarried person living at the house, townhouse or apartment. Each individual should receive their own Certificate Of Rent Paid with only their name on it. In the case of a married couple, they count as one individual. So if you have one married couple and two single persons living at your rental, you need to send a total of three Certificate Of Rent Paid Forms.
Regardless of who is paying the rent, the landlord must divide up the total yearly rent received by the number of individuals equally. You divide the total yearly rent received by the number of Certificate Of Rent Paid forms you are sending to the tenants. It may be that one tenant paid more than the divided share of the rent. They may have even paid most of the rent. This does not matter. The instructions on the 2008 Certificate Of Rent Paid MN form state that the rent stated on the CRP must be divided equally regardless of what was actually paid.
The landlord must send the tenants the MN Certificate of Rent Paid by 1/31/2012 or face a $100 penalty per CRP not sent by the required date.
Failure to properly allocate the proper amount of rent to each CRP recipient will also result in a $100 penalty per CRP not sent or sent with incorrect allocation of rent.
