Accountants in Coney Hall

Incorporation isn't a milestone, it's a calculation: corporation tax versus income tax and NICs, dividend taxation, what you need to draw versus what can stay in the company, and whether limited liability matters for your work. For some Coney Hall businesses it saves thousands; for others it's pure extra paperwork.

Since Section 24, individual landlords can't deduct mortgage interest as an expense — it's a 20% tax credit instead, which pushes some higher-rate landlords into surprising bills. Whether to hold property personally or through a company is now a genuine question with genuine trade-offs.

Payments on account catch people out because the first year effectively bills you one-and-a-half years of tax at once. Knowing that in advance changes how you save through the year — and if profits fall, we can apply to reduce the July payment rather than lending HMRC money interest-free.

Timing disposals across tax years, using losses properly, and the spousal transfer rules can all legitimately reduce capital gains bills — but only before the sale. CGT planning after completion is just arithmetic.

Dividends can only be paid from accumulated profits, and paperwork matters: board minutes and dividend vouchers, dated correctly. "Illegal dividends" isn't dramatic language — overdrawn payments can be reclassified, with tax consequences, if the profits weren't there.

A good accountant should be able to tell you, in plain English, what they'll do, when, and for exactly how much. Vagueness on any of the three is the tell. Everything else — size of firm, fancy office, distance from Coney Hall — is decoration.

Every tax bill is predictable months in advance — which makes tax the most plannable cost a business has. A separate tax savings account, fed a fixed percentage of every sale, converts January from a crisis into a transfer.

The businesses that find January easy are the ones whose bookkeeping happened all year — automatically. Modern software matches bank transactions, files receipts photographed on a phone, and leaves nothing to reconstruct from memory in the new year.