Corporation tax advice: when it is worth paying for

Published fees, checked

Deciding whether you need advice

1. Check whether the answer is published. Rates, thresholds, payment dates, penalties and how marginal relief works are all published. If your question is one of those, the answer is free and on this site.
2. Identify what turns on your own facts. Whether a project qualifies as R&D, whether a cost is capital or revenue, whether companies are associated, how a property disposal is taxed. These need somebody who can see the detail and be responsible for the answer.
3. Size the decision. Advice is worth its fee where the number at stake is a multiple of it. A £2,000 question rarely justifies a £2,000 opinion; a £40,000 one usually does.
4. Ask who carries the risk. A firm that files the return takes responsibility for it. Ask what happens if HMRC opens an enquiry and who pays to answer it.

The questions that genuinely need an adviser

Whether particular work qualifies for R&D relief is the clearest of them. HMRC publishes the definition, but applying it to a specific project is a judgement about technological uncertainty that a competent adviser makes daily and a company makes once. It is also the area HMRC enquires into most, which is why the advice is worth having in writing.

Whether companies are associated is the second, and it is under-asked. The count divides the £50,000 and £250,000 thresholds, so a founder holding three companies can be paying the main rate on a profit that would otherwise sit in the relief band. The rule turns on control rather than on shareholding alone, and a family or founder group is exactly the structure where it is easy to get wrong in both directions.

Whether a cost is capital or revenue, and what capital allowances a building holds, is the third. A refurbishment invoice is rarely one thing, and the split between what is deductible now, what enters a capital allowances pool and what gets no relief at all is a judgement about the work rather than about the invoice.

What advice cannot do, and what this site will not do

No adviser can make a project qualify for R&D relief that does not, and a firm that tells a company otherwise is a risk rather than a service. HMRC's enquiry rates on R&D claims are high and the company, not the adviser, is the one assessed. A fee contingent on a successful claim is normal in this market and it is worth understanding what it does to the incentive on both sides.

This site gives no tax advice and states no view on whether any particular project qualifies. It computes the tax from published rates, explains published rules, and records what firms publish about their own fees. Where you need somebody to look at your own facts and be accountable for the answer, the point of the fee record is to help you choose who, and the enquiry form is to let you ask several at once.

What to expect a first conversation to cover

A firm worth its fee asks about the accounting period, the associated companies, the state of the records and what the company spent money on before it says anything about price. If the first ten minutes are about their credentials rather than your facts, that is a signal.

Expect the fee basis to be one of three: time, a fixed fee for a defined piece of work, or a percentage of what is recovered. The third is standard for R&D and capital allowances and unusual for anything else, and each of the three answers a different question about who carries the risk if the work turns out to be larger than it looked.

Common questions

Do I need corporation tax advice or just a filing service?

A filing service is enough where the questions have published answers: the rate, the deadline, what the penalties are. Advice earns its fee where the answer depends on your own facts, such as whether work qualifies for R&D relief or whether your companies are associated.

How much does corporation tax advice cost?

None of the general practices in this record publishes a fee. The three firms here that do are R&D specialists charging between 5% and 15% of the tax benefit, each with a published minimum fee, which is what a small claim actually pays.

Is a percentage fee normal for tax work?

For R&D relief and capital allowances it is the norm and every published fee in this record is one. For general corporation tax compliance it is not; that work is priced on time or as a fixed fee.

Coverage by relief

• R&D tax relief specialists: what firms charge to handle it