Insights from the Senior Partner

How UK owner-managed companies are taxed — corporation tax, VAT, capital allowances, R&D and exit — and the reliefs a once-a-year review misses.

How company directors are taxed and the most efficient ways to take money out — salary, dividends, pensions, loans and benefits — in plain English.

Tax for UK landlords and property owners — the FHL changes, 60-day CGT, permitted development and Making Tax Digital — explained in plain English.

Owners of a property company who want to start a second venture, or keep development apart from their lettings, are often told to put a holding company on…

Moving shares to a spouse, a son or a daughter is usually done for good reasons: fairness, succession, or sharing the income.

A letter from HMRC suggesting your tax affairs may be incomplete is unsettling, and the temptation is either to ignore it or to sign whatever it encloses.

Since 2017/18 most individual landlords have prepared their rental figures on the cash basis without ever choosing it.

When a landlord's usual home is outside the UK, the duty to collect tax on the rent falls not on the landlord but on the letting agent or, where there is…

Most people starting out in property sourcing register for tax and assume that is the paperwork done.

An owner with two companies lends from the one with cash to the one without, and eventually the money is not coming back.

Handing a property to a shareholder instead of cash looks like the simplest way to take it out of a company.

Selling a company's premises to the directors' own pension and leasing them back is a well-worn arrangement, and a legitimate one.

When a holding company sells a subsidiary, the gain on the shares can be wholly exempt from corporation tax.

Most people who own property assume a profit on sale is a capital gain.

Residential Property Developer Tax is aimed at the largest housebuilders, and most developers will never pay it.

A company that owns let property can deduct its interest in full, which is much of the case for holding property in a company at all.

Companies can usually deduct the interest they pay, and that is often why property sits in a company in the first place.

Every new property loan brings a cluster of fees: the lender's arrangement fee, a broker's fee, the valuation, the legal work on the security.

Build, buy new or renovate a commercial building and 3 per cent of the construction cost comes off taxable profits every year for 33 and a third years.

A company that acquires contaminated or long-derelict land and pays to deal with the problem can deduct 150 per cent of the qualifying cost, or, if it is…

When a landlord replaces furniture, appliances or furnishings in a let home, the cost is deductible, but only for a replacement, only up to what a…

For deaths on or after 6 April 2027, unused pension funds and most pension death benefits count as part of the estate for inheritance tax.

A trader who makes a loss can usually set it against other income and get tax back quickly. A landlord who makes a loss usually cannot.

Transfer a property from one group company to another and stamp duty land tax normally falls away entirely.

Most small companies pay 19 per cent corporation tax on profits up to £50,000 and get marginal relief above that.

Opting to tax turns an exempt commercial property into a taxable one and lets you recover the VAT on it.

Sell a let commercial property with its tenants and the sale can fall outside VAT entirely, as the transfer of a going concern.

On 29 July 2026 the capital goods scheme threshold for land, buildings and civil engineering works rose from £250,000 to £600,000 excluding VAT, and…

The annual tax on enveloped dwellings is the charge most company owners meet only when a penalty notice arrives.

Since Multiple Dwellings Relief was abolished on 1 June 2024, the six-dwelling rule in section 116(7) is the main thing left that moves a residential…

The 2 per cent surcharge on residential purchases by non-residents runs on its own definition of residence, and it is not the Statutory Residence Test…

A cold offer arrives saying the wreck you bought was never residential property and HMRC owes you thousands.

Buy one property, then buy another from the same seller as part of the same deal, and the tax on the first purchase is recalculated.

If your new home completed before your old one sold, you almost certainly paid the 5 per cent higher rates for additional dwellings on the whole purchase…

The £50,000 and £250,000 corporation tax limits are not fixed.

Five propositions landlords routinely believe about repairs and improvements, each tested against what HMRC's manuals and the legislation actually say.

On a small residential development, the reduced rate of VAT is often worth more than any other single planning point on the job, and it is the one most…

A solvent company can be closed cheaply with a DS01, or properly wound up by a liquidator.

Most landlords still think of mortgage interest as an expense.

Incorporation is pitched to landlords as the fix for the mortgage interest restriction, and the annual saving can be real.

Spend enough on builders and the Construction Industry Scheme stops being somebody else's problem and becomes a monthly filing obligation of your own…

Most owner-managed businesses meet VAT registration late and by accident, because the rules are counter-intuitive in exactly two places.

Most directors still price an electric company car off the old two per cent figure.

The abolition of the furnished holiday lettings regime closed the door to business asset disposal relief for holiday-let owners, but the door did not slam…

Converting a family house into a shared rental is one of the most heavily promoted routes into property investment, and licensing is the obligation most…

Use other people's money is the most repeated sentence in property education.

Serviced accommodation, meaning short stays, nightly pricing and hotel-style turnover, has been sold hard as the highest-income use of a residential…

Property training is very good at momentum: strategies, scripts, the encouragement to act.

For most owner-managers of a UK limited company, a small salary combined with dividends remains the standard way to extract profit in 2026/27, because the…

The furnished holiday lettings regime, which for decades taxed qualifying holiday lets almost as if they were a trade, was abolished from 6 April 2025 for…

The VAT Flat Rate Scheme lets a small business pay a fixed percentage of its VAT-inclusive turnover instead of tracking input and output VAT line by line…

The statutory trivial benefits exemption lets an employer provide a small benefit worth £50 or less with no income tax, no National Insurance and no P11D…

A taxable gain on UK residential property must be reported and paid within 60 days of completion, through the HMRC Capital Gains Tax on UK property…

Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) options remain the most tax-efficient way for a growth-stage UK trading company to give key employees equity…

Business Asset Disposal Relief still reduces the capital gains tax you pay when selling a trading business, but the rate has climbed from 10% to 14% and…

For owner-managed company directors, an employer pension contribution is frequently the most efficient way to move profit out of the company: it carries…

A plain-English guide for owner-managed companies to benefits in kind: what they are, how they are reported on form P11D and P11D(b) by 6 July, and the…

Basis period reform has replaced the old current-year basis with a tax-year basis for the self-employed and partners, so profits are now taxed as they…

Full expensing lets companies deduct the full cost of qualifying new plant and machinery from taxable profits in the year of purchase, and it is now a…

For accounting periods beginning on or after 1 April 2024 the separate SME and RDEC schemes are gone, replaced by a single merged expenditure credit and a…

The 2024 amendments materially widened two of England's most useful permitted development rights: Class Q for agricultural buildings and Class MA for…

From 6 April 2025 the employer secondary Class 1 National Insurance rate rose to 15% and the point at which it begins fell to £5,000, while the Employment…

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment is no longer a future project: from 6 April 2026 sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above…

SI 2024/1298 raised the UK audit threshold by approximately 50%. Around 14,000 companies will lose mandatory audit.

Since 1 April 2023 UK corporation tax has run on a two-rate system bridged by marginal relief.

VAT is the tax where the most money falls through the cracks.

If your company has lent you money and the loan is still outstanding nine months after your company's year-end, your company owes HMRC a section 455 CTA…

HMRC allows generous deductions for business travel.