Capital Allowance Claims when Purchasing a Pub
If you own a pub you can claim for Capital Allowances against the plant and machinery with a property based against the purchase, refurbishing, or construction of the property.
What this means is that if you buy a pub you can claim on any Capital Allowances not claimed by a previous owner(s). Before 2014 it wasn’t clear to HMRC whether a Capital Allowance claim has already been done on a particular property. As a result of this HMRC faced duplicate claims for multiple property, which was a headache for the department.
This meant that on the 1 April 2014 new regulations were introduced on Capital Allowances. These new laws means that if you purchased a pub after 1 April 2014 then the value of Capital Allowances that could be claimed were based on the previous Capital Allowances identified by the previous owner(s). No longer would the purchase price be the determining factor for properties purchased after 1 April 2014, instead the previously identified Capital Allowances would be.
Exceptions to the 1 April 2014 Rule
- Refurbished properties can make a claim based on refurbish work conducted on the pub. So if you refurbished 70% of your property, then a Capital Allowance claim may be made on that 70%.
- New build properties can make a claim for Capital Allowances as they would have held no previous Capital Allowances to be identified before 1 April 2014. Therefore the entire build cost of the property may be used for calculating the claim.
- If the previous owner purchased the property before 2008, and then sold it to you after 2014 then you may still make a claim. This means that the 1 April 2014 rules only apply to a specific set of properties that passed owners multiple times between those two dates.
- If you purchased the property within the last two years then there will likely still be time for you to make a Capital Allowance claim, regardless of whether the previous owner had previously identified Capital Allowances or not.
What does this all mean to you?
In all likeliness you can make a claim for Capital Allowances, but if you did purchase the pub after 1 April 2014, and the previous owner also purchased it after 2008 then I strongly recommend that you speak with accountant and/or solicitor about looking into the Capital Allowance Act 2001, Section 198.
Contained in the act is essential legislation about the sale of commercial properties. If you purchased the pub more than 2 years ago then you may not be able to claim Capital Allowances, and you may want to seek legal advice on what your remaining options are.
Making a Claim
If you want expert advice on what can be done about claiming Capital Allowances for you pub, get in touch to see what we can do.
Make a claim today!