Corporation tax services: what a firm actually does for the fee

Published fees, checked

How to get comparable quotes

1. Say what is already done. Whether the statutory accounts are prepared, and by whom. A firm quoting to do the tax on finished accounts is quoting for a different job from one that has to build them first.
2. Name the reliefs in play. Capital allowances, R&D, patent box, losses to carry back. These are where a fee earns itself, and where fees differ by a factor of five between firms.
3. State the associated companies count. It moves the thresholds by division and therefore the rate. A firm that does not ask about it early is not doing the part that matters.
4. Ask what an HMRC enquiry costs. Whether defending the return is inside the fee or billed separately is rarely on a website, and it is the difference between a quoted fee and the real one.

The three tiers, and what each is really priced on

Compliance only is the narrowest: take the finished accounts, prepare the corporation tax computation, file the CT600 and the accounts with HMRC, and tell the company what to pay and when. It is priced on the size and messiness of the accounts, and for a small company with clean records it is a fixed fee that does not move much year to year.

Compliance with the reliefs is what most owner-managed companies actually want. The same filing work, plus somebody looking at whether the company has claimed the capital allowances it is entitled to, whether any of last year's development work qualifies for R&D relief, and whether losses are being used in the best order. This is priced on time, because the work is investigative.

Specialist relief work is a separate engagement and is usually bought separately, from a different firm. R&D claims and capital allowances surveys are the two obvious ones, and both are commonly priced as a share of what they recover rather than as a fee for time. That is why this site keeps a fee record for those firms and not for general practices: the pricing basis is different and comparable.

What moves the fee

The state of the records moves it more than the size of the company. A company with a clean trial balance, a fixed asset register that agrees to the accounts and a list of what it spent on development is a day's work; the same company with none of those is a week's.

So does the number of things that have to be checked rather than computed. Associated companies, a short accounting period, a period straddling a rate change, an overdrawn director's loan account, a property disposal: each of those turns a computation into a question, and questions are what a firm charges for.

The reliefs are where the fee can pay for itself several times over and also where it is least predictable. A capital allowances review on a commercial property either finds a large pool of qualifying fixtures or it does not, and firms in that corner of the market price accordingly, often on a contingent basis. Not one of the capital allowances firms in this record publishes a fee for it.

Who publishes a price, and who does not

Of the ten UK firms whose own pages were read for this site, three print a fee and seven do not. Every one of the three is an R&D specialist rather than a general practice, and each prints a percentage of the tax benefit with a minimum beneath it. The general practices, the capital allowances specialists and the largest advisers all direct a buyer to ask.

That pattern is worth knowing before you start. Comparing corporation tax services means asking several firms the same question in the same words, because there is nothing published to line up. The enquiry form on this site does that in one message rather than four introductory calls, and passes what you write to firms that handle work of that size.

Common questions

What do corporation tax services include?

At a minimum, the corporation tax computation and the CT600 filed with HMRC alongside the statutory accounts. Beyond that it depends on the engagement: reliefs work such as capital allowances and R&D is often quoted and bought separately, sometimes from a different firm.

How much do corporation tax services cost?

General practices do not publish a fee, and none of the seven in this record does. The three firms here that publish a price are R&D specialists charging a percentage of the tax benefit, from 5% to 15%, each with a minimum fee between £1,495 and £5,000.

Should the same firm do the accounts and the tax?

Usually yes for compliance, because the tax computation starts from the accounts and splitting it adds a handover. Specialist reliefs work is the common exception and is frequently bought from a firm that does nothing else.

Coverage by relief

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