Consultants and Senior Hospital Doctors

• If you have a private practice, consider Partnership or Ltd Company status as part of your tax reduction strategy
• Keep on top of NHS Pension changes and plan for the future with care
• Protect your investments by sensible diversification of assets types

For a full list of the main areas that you need to keep on top of for successful financial planning, download our 1 page guide for Consultants and Senior Hospital Doctors on the right hand side of this page...

New-style locum insurances, for years used by GPs to protect their profits by paying for a locum GP to do their work when they are ill, can also be set up to protect your private practice from any illness during the first year. As well as insuring your own income, it can also include your secretary's wages, premises rental and any on-going bills and costs. It also means that you can change your existing Income Protection Insurance to 12 months deferred and make it cheaper. Re-jigging your protection can give you more cover for less cost.

Changes to the tax system for high earners mean that anyone with total earnings of over £100,000 per annum will lose their personal allowance on a progressive basis such that it entirely disappears at around £112,000 of earnings, costing you up to £2,450 of additional taxation every year.

On top of this, for those with total taxable earnings in excess of £150,000, a new 50% tax rate is being introduced. Given the amount already spent on secretarial help, nursing support, premises and insurances, losing 50% of what is left can make you question if it is worth the bother, but there may be some relatively simple, perfectly legal adjustments that can be made to the way your practice is set up that can be implemented to reduce this tax burden. Contact Hampton Dean for more details.

The government recently introduced changes to pension taxation which could affect all doctors, but more especially higher earners. In many ways, because of the way that the NHS works, any tax liability that you might be charged is largely unavoidable. Nevertheless, we feel strongly that it is better to be aware of the issues so that you can plan for a bill rather than be surprised.

To find out more, download our 'Guide to Pension Taxation changes' on the right hand side of this page ...