Accountants for Dentists in Broadstone: Specialist Tax and Accounting Support for Dental Professionals

The work varies with your situation. For a self-employed or associate dentist, it commonly covers bookkeeping, preparing and filing your Self Assessment tax return, and making sure professional expenses such as indemnity cover and subscriptions are properly claimed where allowable. For a practice owner, it can extend to annual accounts, Corporation Tax or partnership returns, payroll for staff, VAT returns where you are registered, and tax planning around profit extraction, equipment purchases or changes to the practice. Most dental clients use a combination of these services rather than all of them.

Many associate dentists do file their own returns, and some manage perfectly well. The difficulty usually appears when you have more than one income source, when a practice pays you in a way that needs unpicking, or when you are unsure which costs are allowable against your self-employed income. An accountant can check that your income has been reported in the right place, that your expenses are treated consistently, and that anything you have already paid on account is correctly reflected.

In practice, the two are often recorded separately in your books because they can arrive through different routes and at different times — NHS payments may come through a contract or practitioner arrangement, while private fees are typically collected directly or through a practice. How each is reported depends on whether you receive the income personally, through a practice, or through a company. We review how your income actually reaches you and record it in a way that reflects the underlying arrangements rather than forcing it into a single category.

There is no structure that suits every dental business. A limited company can bring different tax and National Insurance outcomes and often provides more flexibility around how profits are taken, but it also introduces additional filing, compliance and record-keeping obligations. Partnerships suit some practice owners and bring their own rules on profit sharing and reporting. It is worth reviewing the position if your income has grown, you are taking on a partner, or your circumstances have changed, since the most suitable structure can shift over time.

Yes. Payroll support for dental practices commonly covers nurses, receptionists, hygienists, therapists and other employed team members, including the calculations and reporting that accompany each pay run. Where the practice operates a pension scheme, the associated obligations are part of the same process. If you also pay yourself a salary or dividends from a limited company, that can be coordinated with the wider tax position rather than handled in isolation.

A practical starting point is to keep everything that shows money coming in and money going out: invoices and payment advices from practices, bank and card statements, receipts for materials and equipment, indemnity insurance documents, professional subscription records and details of any practice-related travel. Keeping these organised as the year progresses makes the accounts and tax return far quicker to prepare and reduces the risk of an allowable cost being missed. Records should be retained for as long as HMRC requires.

Earlier than most people expect. Once a sale or purchase is well advanced, there is often limited room to change the structure of the deal, so involving an accountant during the planning stage gives more opportunity to consider how the transaction is put together, what the accounts show a buyer, and how the proceeds or costs may be treated for tax. If you are buying, the same applies — understanding the financial history of a practice before you commit is far more useful than reviewing it afterwards.

The process is usually less disruptive than dentists anticipate. We would ask for details of your current adviser, obtain the information needed to take over the engagement, and arrange the handover of records and prior filings. You do not need to prepare anything yourself beforehand, and where a return or accounts deadline is approaching, we will look at the timing so the transition does not create unnecessary pressure.