STax – helping property owners realise the benefits of Capital Allowances

With over £450m in successful claims, STax is one of the UK’s largest specialist Capital Allowance consultancies. It works with major conglomerates through to owners of furnished holiday lets. 

Combining qualified Tax Advisors, Accountants and Chartered Surveyors in our nationwide, 20 strong team, we are perfectly positioned to help anyone involved in real estate access the benefits of their due Capital Allowances.

The claiming of Capital Allowances is your statutory right and STax is a recognised expert in this specialist area of taxation – over the last 12 months, STax has been recognised with the following awards:

• Best Specialist Real Estate Tax Advisers – UK

• Best Specialist Nationwide Tax Consultancy 2022

• Commercial Tax Consultancy of the Year 

• Finance Tax Awards : Capital Allowances – UK.

STax has been providing effective advice for property owners and their advisors for over a decade, to ensure they access their full entitlement to capital allowances on fixtures. Being a fusion of professionals from taxation, accountancy and quantity surveying, STax is ideally placed to ensure you maximise on the benefit of this relief whilst complying with the rules. 

The claiming of Capital Allowances is a highly specialist area. This has resulted in tens of billions of pounds of tax relief going unclaimed; STax ensures that clients claim the maximum amount of relief due.

Advice relating to Capital Allowances on fixtures requires more than one specialist discipline. To build an accurate and robust claim report, you need within your armoury a Chartered Surveyor, a forensic accountant and a property tax specialist with knowledge on the inner workings of over 100+ years of case law relating to Capital Allowances. Not the sort of thing you see in many general practice accountancy firms.

When you buy a property, subject to what is agreed in the purchase documentation, you are perfectly entitled to claim a proportion of the purchase consideration as Capital Allowances. 

However, calculating that figure in a compliant manner is far from straight forward.

Due to the mechanics of the processes in place, claims are often made as a percentage of the expenditure and can be for quite a considerable proportion. 

Below is a selection of some of the many property types STax have worked on and the average of the unrestricted claims made. (see original for which image goes here)

Which types of properties are eligible?

In the eyes of the Capital Allowances Act, all properties qualify but there is an exclusion for a Dwelling Houses. Dwelling Houses are, in effect, your plain, vanilla living space i.e. residences and buy-to-lets. HMRC does accept that some properties may comprise of multiple dwelling houses and therefore the fixtures in the space between them can qualify for Capital Allowances.

Purchase, developments, or improvements to the following types of property are potentially eligible for Capital Allowances:

• UK commercial property 

• Furnished holiday lets

• Overseas commercial property (subject to UK tax)

• Multi-unit residential properties e.g., blocks of apartments

What is an eligible item of fixed plant and machinery, i.e., a fixture, has been the subject of over a century of debate through the courts. Fixed plant and machinery covers many systems that are commonplace in almost all properties, including:

• Electrical distribution and lighting

• Plumbing and heating

• Air conditioning and handling

• Security and fire alarms

• and many, many more 

How easy is to make a claim?

In the first instance, all STax needs to assess a potential Capital Allowance claim is the property address, on receipt of the address one of our dedicated team will perform a “Desktop Review” (at no cost) to ascertain the nature and extent of any potential claim. Once we have this information, one of the STax sales team will be in touch to outline the potential size of your claim – it really is that simple

Allan Shaw, Senior Sales Manager at STax, said: “We have made the process of claiming this niche area of tax relief our sole focus and it’s always satisfying when we hear from clients who have benefited from many thousands of pounds of tax relief of which, previously, they were completely unaware was due to them.”

You can check out more about STax and the process of making a Capital Allowance claim at www.s-tax.co.uk or by emailing us at sales@s-tax.co.uk