In recent months, more and more owners of commercial property have been switching onto the lucrative tax rebates that can come from unused capital allowances.
The good news is that of all commercial property categories, warehouses and depots are getting some of the biggest tax rebates of all. What’s more, we estimate that nine out of 10 warehouse owners will be due a rebate of some kind.
So what are capital allowances and why are such huge rebates due? They’re basically a form of tax relief available to anyone incurring capital expenditure buying, building or making adjustments to commercial property – such as a warehouse.
The problem, historically, has been that identifying capital allowances within commercial properties is extremely complex and a very specialist area, so much so that even accountants only scratch the surface.
Basically, while your accountancy firm will claim on more obvious items such as fire extinguishers and flooring materials, generally speaking they will not drill down to the items where the far more significant costs to a business lie. These might include air conditioning or heating systems, (emergency) lighting and security systems, plant and machinery items.
A specialist capital allowances firm, by contrast, will have a different skill-set and a more detailed understanding of capital allowances law and practice than most accountants. And through an in-depth forensic survey of the property, it is able to uncover far more valuable capital allowances.
So what kind of money are we talking about? This will naturally vary from case to case but we recently claimed back £555,000 on behalf of a client who owned a portfolio of warehouses. And this is after higher rate tax and our own tax-deductible fee.
What makes capital allowances even more attractive is that it is possible to claim for unused capital allowances from previous years in any later year’s tax return, as long as the assets are still owned in that later tax year.
It’s worth pointing out, finally, that we will only charge a fee if we uncover at least £50,000 of unclaimed capital allowances, which means there is no risk and no up-front cost for the warehouse owners who approach us. You only pay if we make you a sizeable amount of money in the first place.
By: Dave Collier, Director, CA Tax Solutions
CA Tax Solutions
Tel: 0300 303 1903
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