choosing an IFA - how do I know they are any good?

MrsCautious

richards123 wrote: »

yes but my wife only works part time and doesnt get anywhere near her tax allowance and I'm self employed....

so savings over £16K = no UC. (£3K pa) Income from rental that tips over tax allowances = taxed at going rate. I think we would be better off paying tax on some of the rental than seeing goodbye to all the UC which is worth approx £3K a year. I think:)

so to summarise...

one rental property that after expenses gives us say £3K pa. My wife earns £3K a year. She has £6Kpa allowance left and the prop rental profit takes only half of that. If we ended up renting out and paying tax on £3k rental profit that would only be roughly £750pa. Losing the £3K pa through having over £16k in savings is far more expensive...

Judging by my replies so far on this thread, you'd be right to suspect I'm a complete numpty but my gut feeling after reading this summary would be that your accountant should be the one to be able to help you reduce tax, however my own experience is that an accountant used to advising on company matters has a poor grasp of tax credits etc as that's not their area of interest/expertise so the two don't necessarily go together. I'm currently trying to get my head round savings/earnings/tax credits and that's why I flagged up the CAB, I am going there next week, we'll see! I'll just throw this in to confuse things more, would it be worth your while becoming a limited company so that your pay was divided into a lower salary with dividends, taxed at a lower rate?