During our time as Capital Allowance specialists, we have encountered our fair share of commercial property owners who hold the strong belief that they are not entitled to claim allowances, or that claiming these tax refunds is simply ‘too good to be true’. Some take quite a bit of convincing before they believe their eligibility to claim, and once they’re on board, the results speak for themselves.
We recently encountered a client such as this, but what made this claim a little different was the sheer level of allowances they were entitled to. This was a London based client who owned an office in the heart of the city, so initially we could guess the kind of allowances that would be found. Typically, within central London, large commercial properties can contain many items that would qualify for capital allowances which can result in a high claim, especially since the original price of the property is likely to be high.
Despite the client’s potential to claim thousands of pounds in tax relief, they were completely unaware that they were entitled to these refunds and initially couldn’t get their head around the fact that they can actually claim cash refunds on items within their property. As with the majority of our clients, their first response was ‘my accountant will have claimed for Capital Allowances’, and upon which they realised this hadn’t happened they stated, ‘my accountant really should have claimed for this’. This is the common problem many accountants face, since they are being expected to do a job they are not qualified to do and without the necessary team in place, which can sometimes result in the accountant being blamed for the client missing out on thousands of pounds in cash refunds.
In addition to this, accountants do not have a specialist knowledge of the HMRC guidelines, and should not be expected to be able to deal with Capital Allowance claims. You wouldn’t go to your general dentist expecting them to fit your braces, you would go to an orthodontist who is specialised in that particular area of dentistry. Similarly with accountants, they simply can’t be expected to be able to deal with capital allowance claims because this is a very specialist area of tax, which is why a Capital Allowance team, such as ours, are necessary to process these claims.
Once the London based office owner understood this and realised their potential for a high claim, we immediately began the process of identifying a claim and submitting the report to HMRC. As expected, the report was accepted and the client received thousands of pounds in cash refunds. These tax refunds provided fantastic benefits to the individual and their business. Finding results like these are one of the reasons why we love doing what we do!
