By Connor Smith, Accountant at Hive Business
If there’s one question that I find myself being asked more than any other, its “Can I claim my training courses?”
There’s always a big amount of debate in professional circles about the subject and to this day is still a subjective, grey area.
HMRC tend to take a slightly archaic approach to training costs, based on their infamous mantra:
“To be claimed, expenditure will be wholly and exclusively for the purposes of the existing trade”
This means that the Revenue argues a shockingly narrow view on allowable training expenditure, essentially preferring to limit this to courses and conferences going over the clinical treatments that you carry out every day and prohibiting anything with a whiff of ‘new’ knowledge.
How do you define ‘new’ knowledge though?
To take this to the extreme, if I were to pack in the day job and follow my childhood ambition of becoming an astronaut, perhaps unsurprisingly (and unfortunately) my admission to the European Space Agency’s Academy would be deemed unallowable by HMRC. No tax relief on my trip to the moon, as this is totally unrelated to my current trained profession.
Now say I decide to specialise in a new area of accountancy, one which I have covered on the surface during my initial training but which I want to develop in more detail. This will inevitably change the day to day work I complete, but as it was initially covered at my basic training, there’s no new area of knowledge. This would, therefore, be allowable.
The same applies to dentistry. You will have covered the fundamentals of everything in initial training. Simply refocusing your work into a Masters in Implantology rather than general dentistry is not new knowledge, its upgrading existing areas of knowledge.
Now – I’m waiting for Elon Musk to invent personal spacecraft. Perhaps we’ll all be able to claim a trip to Mars under Capital Allowances in the future.
If you’re considering undertaking some big training in the near future and want more advice on your specific situation and if it could be claimed, get in touch on 01872 300232 or email us at hello@hivebusiness.co.uk.
