Accountants need to make sure they properly advise their clients in respect of capital allowances in advance of expenditure being incurred or property being bought or sold. As is always the case for accountants they need to be confident they are offering advice to their client which is in the client’s best interests.
If you’re an accountant make sure that:
- Clients buying a property ensure at contract stage their rights to claiming capital allowances once they have acquired the property. If this is not done then the ability to claim allowances from the purchase is lost for ever
- Clients selling property where no capital allowances claims have been made, need to review (at pre-contract stage) the potential to claim and retain allowances of use them as a sales aid
- Clients retaining existing property (not currently looking to sell) review all client property expenditure, purchase and construction, no matter how old. It is never too late to make a claim for capital allowances from any commercial property bought at any time in the past. This is irrespective of whether the owner/investor is a company or an individual, providing the building and the original assets are within the owner/investor’s ownership when the claim is made.
Don’t forget that capital allowances can be applied to the expenditure on the:
- purchase of an existing or newly built commercial property
- construction of commercial property
- alterations, extensions and refurbishments to commercial property.
Across the property landscape capital allowances are one of the least used but best methods of reducing building owner’s income tax or corporation tax liabilities.
There are of course many further aspects to take into consideration and we work with surveyors with over twenty year’s capital allowance experience and would be happy to discuss your client’s property suitability for making a claim.
