As a landlord with a growing portfolio, it’s important to have good property tax advice to ensure you meet your obligations and save as much tax as possible. Archimedia Accounts are commercially focused, with a unique combination of property and accountancy experience to help you make the most profitable decisions.
Welcome to Archimedia Accountants for landlords
At Archimedia Accounts, we’re uniquely placed to help you save as much tax as possible because, as well as accountants, we’re portfolio landlords ourselves. Our owners, Barbara and Chris, have a large rental property portfolio (commercial and residential) grown over 30 years, which means we can offer advice to grow your business.
We hold regular tax planning meetings with our landlord clients to identify valuable tax relief opportunities and help with strategic planning. This may involve advice on re-financing, risk assessments, helping you to evaluate deals and general financial management. Our goal is to ensure your assets are working as hard as possible.
Contact us today to find out how we can help you as your dedicated landlord accountants.
Helping you to be a tax-efficient landlord
Good landlord accountants, like Archimedia, will meet with you regularly to discuss:
- Use their experience to actually help you grow your portfolio (at Archimedia, our owners are extremely successful landlords themselves)
- How to minimise your Capital Gains Tax bill (and how a lender would view the situation)
- How lenders view changes to your structure, and any additional fees involved
- Introduction to important contacts
- Important discussions about rental property structure changes, e.g. setting up limited companies
- Commercial decisions and their effect on tax, e.g. changes from buy-to-lets to serviced accommodation, and HMOs
- Helping your decisions on building the long-term wealth of your family
- Help in improving yields
Our landlord accounting service can save you money and help grow your portfolio. For more information, please get in touch.
Capital Gains Tax
If you’re selling property, you’ll most likely have a Capital Gains Tax liability. For residential property, if you hold it as an individual, the rates of Capital Gains Tax are 18%, or 28% for higher rate taxpayers.
It’s the same for HMOs but different for serviced accommodation. If you hold the property in a limited company, the Capital Gains Tax implications are different. For commercial property, the rates are cheaper, 10% and 20% for basic and higher-rate taxpayers.
Capital Gains Tax on properties can be a very complicated area, and it’s always good to take advice from an accountant before making any big decisions.
Income tax
If you own the property in your own personal name, you declare the rental income on your personal tax return. Alternatively, if you own it through a limited company, any salary or dividends you take through the company will go onto your personal tax returns.
The more you plan, the more opportunities there are to save on income tax. For example, you should plan to use all family members’ income tax thresholds if possible (including your partner, children, and even your parents or grandparents).
Stamp Duty Land Tax
When you’re buying property in your own name, there are different stamp duty rates for a second property and different-priced properties etc. There are many stamp duty tax calculators online to help you work out your liability.
Stamp Duty Land Tax is far cheaper on commercial properties. The definition of commercial is quite broad, so it’s always worth talking to an accountant. Property, such as serviced accommodation and hotels, can be classed as “semi-commercial” for stamp duty purposes.
Our buy-to-let landlord accounting services
Property Tax Planning
We hold tax planning sessions with our landlord clients every 3 months. Our head of tax, Barbara, has over 30 years of experience as an accountant and has a successful commercial and residential property portfolio of over 40 units, so she is ideally placed to help.
During your quarterly tax reviews, we will focus on your tax position, business goals, capital gains liability, wealth, building your portfolio, and rental income.
Other Accountancy Services
We can offer you a whole range of accountancy services to help your business thrive. We can undertake your company bookkeeping, so you know exactly how much profit each property is making. We also produce year-end accounts and submit your personal and limited company tax returns (as appropriate).
If required, we also provide your property business(es) with VAT and payroll services.
Why choose Archimedia as your landlord accountant?
We pride ourselves on personal service and will get to know your individual circumstances to ensure you’re managing your buy-to-let properties in the most tax-efficient way.
Our focus is on tax planning so that you know your tax liability well in advance, helping you to make decisions about things like property improvements in a timely manner.
We also help you grow your portfolio using our experience with our own properties.
If you plan properly, you can save £1,000s each year.
As property owners as well as accountants, we know the implications of tax-saving decisions on lenders’ thinking, finance costs, yields, capital gains, and income. So you can benefit from our combined accounting and commercial acumen to make the most profitable decisions.
Contact us today to find out more about our landlord accounting services.
FAQs
Do landlords need an accountant?
In theory, if you own property in your own name and submit a personal tax return, you can manage your accounts independently. But landlord tax law is complex, and you run the risk of non-compliance and paying too much tax if you’re not up to speed with the latest developments.
How much tax do buy-to-let landlords pay?
There is no National Insurance payable on buy-to-let properties. If you own the property in your own name, you pay income tax on the profits, which are declared on your personal tax return. If you’ve made a loss, that loss can be carried forward and set off against future profits.
There are other types of tax which buy-to-let landlords pay, such as Capital Gains Tax and Stamp Duty Land Tax. If you’ve made a loss on your property through capital allowances and you’ve paid income tax from other income, you may be able to set this loss off against the salaried income in the year.
Higher-rate taxpayers can save huge amounts of tax in this area, especially if they utilise serviced accommodation – please talk to us first if you think this applies to you.