GP Accountants
Written and reviewed by the Medical Accountants editorial team. Last reviewed .
A GP is taxed in more places than almost any other professional. Partnership profit arrives as a share of something you did not personally invoice, a salaried post runs through PAYE, out of hours and extended access sessions land somewhere in between, and the NHS pension takes a cut of most of it on rules that change depending on which of those you are doing at the time.
We handle the whole of it as one position rather than as separate jobs. That means the return, the pension certificates and the figure you actually get to keep are worked out together, and the number you use to plan drawings is the same number that gets filed.
Work We Do for GPs
For a GP partner: the practice accounts, your profit share, your Self Assessment return, your annual certificate of pensionable profits, and the tax reserve you should be holding back from drawings. For a salaried or sessional GP: the return, any expenses claim against employment income, and the type 2 end of year certificate that most salaried GPs are surprised to learn is their responsibility and not the practice manager's.
Where you do both, which is now common, we work out the split once and use it everywhere. The overlap is also where the pension gets expensive, so we run the annual allowance calculation in the same pass rather than waiting for a statement to arrive and surprise you.
The Superannuation Certificate Problem
The certificates are the part that goes wrong most often, and they go wrong quietly. A missed certificate does not generate a penalty letter the way a late tax return does. It generates a pension record that is wrong, sometimes for years, and by the time anyone notices the figures have to be reconstructed from accounts nobody kept.
We complete and submit them on the schedule, chase the practice for the figures they hold, and keep a copy of everything we sent. The detail of what each certificate is and when it is due is set out in our guide to GP superannuation certificates.
Profit Share Against Personal Tax
Partnership profit is taxed on you personally whether or not it was drawn. That is the single most common cause of a January bill a GP was not expecting: a good year in the practice accounts turns into a personal liability at 40% or 45%, plus payments on account on top, and the money has already gone out as drawings.
We give you the reserve figure as soon as the accounts are drafted rather than at the end of January, and we tell you what the payments on account will be for the following year in the same email. If the number is unaffordable, a Time to Pay arrangement is negotiated before the deadline rather than after it.
Fees for GP Work
Quoted as a fixed figure in writing before anything starts, based on what you actually have: whether there is a partnership, how many income sources, and how many certificates are outstanding. There is no hourly rate and no charge for asking a question during the year.
Where a salaried GP has one PAYE post and nothing else, the honest answer is often that the return is simple enough to file yourself. We say so rather than quoting for it.