Building a business may take most of your time but it is important to make sure you are making the most of the thousands of pounds of potential tax relief and allowances claimable every tax year. Jonathan Amponsah CTA FCCA, founder and CEO of the The Tax Guys, highlights some common mistakes and ways to mitigate an unnecessary tax bill
Business owners have a lot to contend with and committing time to discuss tax compliance and tax planning with their accountants can slip off the agenda. This means that tax mistakes are highly likely to be made, given the current complicated tax rules in the UK. Here we set out 12 steps to minimising your tax bill and making the most of the government's endless tax reliefs for business.
1. Don't miss out on these eight generous tax breaks
There are more tax breaks within the law that most entrepreneurs miss out on but here are the most common ones:
- research and development (R&D);
- bad debt provision (make sure you have taken steps to recover the money);
- capital allowances on equipment used for the business including fixtures which are part of the building you have bought;
- lease premiums;
- warranty provisions;
- seed enterprise investment scheme (SEIS) and enterprise investment scheme (EIS) tax reliefs;
- entrepreneurs relief (ER); and
- £40,000 lettings relief (this might be scrapped by HMRC).
The reason why most of these reliefs get missed is that you actually have to make a claim to get them.
