Why (other) accountants won't advise on tax credits?

Welcome to my first blog.


I’ll be writing mostly on tax credits, but will cover any general tax matters or specialist tax ideas that I think you would be interested in. I may even mention accountancy matters!

This blog on Tax Credits has a business focus as that is my sole target audience when talking about tax credits. I believe the blog will have a unique angle in that respect.

Why I do I feel it will be unique? Firstly, there doesn’t seem to be much on the internet about business income or profits as they affect tax credits and secondly accountants simply aren’t interested in tax credits as a service. Why is this?

• Accountants feel that they are social benefits and aren’t anything they should be advising on

• They feel they are too complicated particularly administratively

• They can’t make enough money at it!

I feel that is wrong!

As tax credits calculations use the profit/loss figures from the business, ignoring tax credits must mean that there is a major risk of giving bad advice. For example, it might not be in a client’s interest to be paid by way a dividend. Is there another way the client could be paid? Perhaps they have a directors loan account which could be used? This could be the case where the business has been recently incorporated and new goodwill has been created or large funds have been introduced to start up the business or simply the business has a historically large director loan balance brought forward which is never considered in terms of tax planning? It’s easy to recommend paying dividends up to the basic rate tax threshold as it seems that no further tax will be payable.

Is your accountant damaging your wealth?

http://www.sandersgeeson.co.uk/