Retail Group – additional allowances £4,300,000

This project consisted of re-analysing some 10+ years of tenants leasehold improvements for a national retailer’s secondary branded shops.  The shops had been created by sub-letting part of the retailer’s main stores and an agreement on how capital allowances could be claimed had been reached with HMRC.

An enquiry into a return and a change of Inspector revealed that the existing agreement with HMRC was not being implemented reliably and HMRC disallowed a material amount of additions that had been treated as qualifying.

Our work involved selecting projects where cost information was still available, analysing those projects, agreeing the results of those analyses with the Inspector and agreeing how to apply those findings to the additions that were in dispute for the open periods.

Our work resulted in the protection of £8,900,000 of plant & machinery allowances plus the identification of a further £4,300,000 of allowances.

Our work produced an overall tax saving for a 23% taxpayer of £898,000.

Car Wash Facility – additional allowances of £18,000

An accountant that refers work to us asked if we would be able to tell him if there was any plant & machinery within approximately £60,000 of building works carried out to install an automated car wash machine and jet wash facility.

The property was approximately 120 miles away.  We obtained a copy of the invoices from the client, some photographs of the facility and a site layout drawing – all received electronically.

From these documents we identified an additional £18,000 of plant & machinery allowances.

Our client was an individual and our work produced an overall tax saving for him, a 40% taxpayer of £7,200.  Our fee was calculated on a time basis and for the few hours we spent preparing the analysis our charges were less than 10% of the tax saving.