Guidance

HS252 Capital allowances and balancing charges 2021

Updated 20 May 2024

Overview

You cannot claim capital allowances if you use cash basis, except for cars. Find out how to calculate your taxable profits in Helpsheet 222.

From 29 October 2018, a new capital allowance for the qualifying costs of constructing new, non-residential structures or buildings is available called Structures and Buildings Allowance. Check if you can claim capital allowances for structures and buildings.

If you’re running a business, you may need to buy certain items such as tools and equipment to help you to carry out your work. If the items are small in value, for example items of stationery, and used in the day-to-day running of the business, you can claim the cost of these items as trading expenses. You cannot claim capital allowances for any cost that you can claim as a trading expense. Find more information about expenses if you’re self-employed.

If you buy items that you keep to use in your business, such as plant, machinery, cars, tools, equipment, desks or computers, you cannot claim the cost as a trading expense. Instead, you can claim capital allowances.

Capital allowances are available from the date your business starts trading. You can also claim capital allowances for items bought before you started trading, if they were necessary for the business to run.

Capital allowances for items, such as plant, machinery, tools, equipment or computers, are called plant and machinery allowances. Plant and machinery allowances do not cover:

• stock - items that your business buys and sells as part of its trade
• furniture, fixtures and equipment in a let residential property, unless it is a qualifying furnished holiday letting
• land, buildings and parts of buildings, apart from certain parts of buildings such as electrical, lighting, heating and ventilation systems

Who can claim plant and machinery allowances

You can claim plant and machinery allowances if you have a business and you buy assets for that business which you keep to use in that business. You can claim if you’re:

• self-employed
• a member of a partnership
• a company or organisation that pays Corporation Tax
• a landlord - but not for residential properties that are not holiday lets
• an employee who buys equipment that you need to do your job, because your employer doesn’t provide the item - not cars, vans, motorbikes or bicycles

Claiming capital allowances

You pool (add together) the cost of your item with the cost of any other items bought for business use during the year. Your allowance is worked out on the total amount in the pool, not on the cost of each item.

What you can put in the pool

You can include:

• the cost of the item, less VAT - unless you are unregistered
• the cost of improving large items
• the cost of installing a large item
• the original cost (not interest or charges) of large items bought on hire purchase or other finance methods, such as a loan

If your item was a gift or you bought it for another purpose before using it in your business, you do not add its original cost to the pool. Instead you add the market value of the item on the day your business started to use it.

Types of plant and machinery allowance pools

There are 3 types of pools where you put the cost of your bought or gifted items.

Main pool

Use the main pool for the majority of equipment bought by your business. Do not include cars with high CO2 emissions.

Special rate pool

Use the special rate pool for items that cannot go into the main pool, for example:

• certain building fixtures or integral features of buildings, such as electrical systems - wiring, lighting, heating or ventilation systems
• long life assets – equipment with an expected business life of 25 years or more
• cars with high CO2 emissions

Single asset pools

Items of equipment including cars that you use for both business and private purposes do not go into your main or special rate pool. Instead, you put the cost of each into its own single asset pool.

If you’re an employee and receive a payment from your employer to cover any fall in the value of an asset you own, you put the asset in a single asset pool and take off your employer’s payment from the pool’s value. This will reduce your annual investment allowance (AIA) and writing down allowance (WDA).

How much you can claim

First year allowances

You can claim 100% of the cost of specific assets in the tax year that you buy them. These include:

• certain new energy-saving and water efficient equipment - check the Energy Technology List
• new cars with carbon dioxide emissions of 50 gms per km or less
• certain new vehicle gas refueling equipment
• certain new vehicle electric charge point equipment
• new zero-emission goods vehicles
• new plant and machinery for use in designated areas within certain enterprise zones

You claim first year allowances before you add the cost of the item to the pool. So, if you claim a first year allowance the amount you add to the pool for that piece of equipment is nil. But if you later sell it, you deduct the price you receive from the pool. This can result in a balancing charge. You start each pool for every year with any amount left in it from the previous year.

Annual investment allowance

If you bought business equipment, you can claim an AIA to use against your taxable profits for the year you bought it. You cannot claim AIA for the cost of cars or for items you received as a gift, or for items you bought for another reason before you started to use them in your business.

Trustees or mixed partnerships (partnerships not made up entirely of individuals) cannot claim the AIA. To claim Annual Investment Allowance:

• add the cost of the item to the appropriate pool
• work out the amount of AIA you can claim - find details of the maximum allowances
• take away the AIA from the amount you added to the pool

If the AIA rate changed in the period you are claiming for, you need to adjust the amount you can claim. For guidance, see Annual investment allowance: limit changes during accounting periods.

Writing down allowances

Writing down allowances help you reduce (write down) the balance of your pooled costs. The 2 rates are:

• main pool rate – 18%
• special pool rate – 6%

The rate for a single asset pool item is the same as it would be if the item was in the main or special pool. For example, a computer would be main rate and a car with high CO2 emissions would be special rate.

Claiming the writing down allowance

Start with any balance left in the pool from the year before:

• add the costs of any items you bought where you have not claimed AIA
• take away the amount you got for any items you sold
• take away the market value of any items your business stopped using and which you kept for yourself

This will give you your new pool balance. You can now claim the WDA. This is 18% of the balance in your main pool or 6% of the balance in your special rate pool.

Small pools allowance

You can write off all the balance in your main pool or the special rate pool when your pool’s value is £1,000 or less before you work out the WDA. This is called a small pools allowance. You claim this instead of claiming a WDA.

Capital allowances and cars

There are special rules for claiming capital allowances on the cost of cars. If you bought a car on or after 6 April 2009, the allowance you claim depends on your car’s CO2 emissions. See your V5 certificate or find information on car fuel and CO2 emissions data.

The allowances you can claim depend on your car’s CO2 emissions and when you bought the car. Find more information about capital allowances for business cars.

Short and long life assets

Short life assets

You can choose to put the cost of an item into a single short life asset pool rather than the main pool. If you buy lots of things together such as glasses or cutlery you can add all the expenditure you spent in one go together and put it in to a short life single asset pool. Short life assets do not include:

• cars
• assets used partly for private use
• items in the special rate pool including integral features

You work out allowances separately, each year, for items in single asset pools. If you have not disposed of an asset in a short life asset pool after 8 years, you close the short life asset pool and transfer the balance in it to the main pool. You do this by taking away an amount equal to the balance in the short life asset pool so reducing the balance to nil. You then add the same amount to your main pool.

If you sell or dispose of an asset that’s in a short life asset pool before 8 years you will have a balancing allowance or a balancing charge. If you want your asset treated as a short life asset, you need to tell HMRC in writing by one year after 31 January following the end of the tax year that you bought the item in. You cannot change your mind once you have told us.

Example

You buy a computer in your accounting period ended 31 July 2020. You must let HMRC know by 31 January 2022 that you want this treated as a short life asset.

Long life assets

These assets are plant and certain machinery which have an expected business life, when new, of 25 years or more. You normally put long life assets into a special rate pool. If your business is your full-time occupation and you spend less than £100,000 on long life assets, you can put this cost into the main pool instead.

Assets leased out

You can claim capital allowances if you lease out your assets to other users - but not first year allowances. This does not include assets leased out on a long-funding lease.

Fixtures

If you buy a property from another business, you can only claim allowances for fixtures such as kitchen fittings, electrical or heating systems, if the previous owner had put the costs for the fixtures in a pool and if you both agree how much of the total amount you paid for the property relates to the fixtures, usually by making a joint election under section 198 of the Capital Allowances Act 2001.

If you’re thinking of buying, selling or leasing a business property that capital allowances may be available for, you should contact your tax adviser.

Disposals

When you sell something that you claimed plant and machinery allowances on (including AIA or first year allowance) you deduct the amount you get for selling it from the balance in your pool. Do this before you work out the allowances you can claim for that year.

You also make a deduction if you stop using the item in your business for whatever reason. The amount you deduct depends on why you stopped using it. If it was lost or destroyed, you deduct the amount you get from any insurance. If you had no insurance, you deduct its market value. If you kept it for yourself or gave it to a family member you deduct the market value.

Balancing charge

If you sell an item you claimed capital allowances for, and the sale or value of the item is more than the balance in the pool, you add the difference between the 2 amounts to your taxable profits. This is a balancing charge. You can have a pool even if you have claimed AIA on all your costs. The balance in the pool can be nil.

If you sell an asset for which you claimed AIA or first year allowances, and your pool has a zero balance, the amount you sell it for, or its market value if you give it away or use privately, is the balancing charge.

Example

If you buy a van for £10,000 and sell it 3 years later for £4,000 the net cost to you was £6,000. If you claimed £10,000 AIA when you bought the van you will have had more allowances than the net cost of it to you, so you have to adjust your allowances when you sell the van. You do this by taking £4,000 off the balance in your pool before you work out the writing down allowances.

If the balance in your pool is more than £4,000 this will reduce the amount before you work out your allowances for the year. If the balance is less than £4,000 you will have a balancing charge equal to the difference between the balance and £4,000. For example, if the balance is £500 the balancing charge will be £3,500, which is the difference between £4,000 and £500.

If the balance in your pool is nil, for example because you have claimed AIA on everything that you have bought, you will have a £4,000 balancing charge that is added to your taxable profits.

Balancing allowance

If your business stops trading, you can claim any balance left in the pool after you take away the amounts you get for selling it, or the market value of things you do not sell, as a balancing allowance.

You take balancing allowances off your taxable profits. You only get a balancing allowance in the main or special rate pool when you stop your business. You can get a balancing allowance in a single asset pool when you sell or dispose of the asset that is in it.

Accounting periods and capital allowances

Accounting periods less than a year

If your accounting period is less than a calendar year, you reduce the amount of AIA, small pools allowance and writing down allowance you claim.

For example, if the AIA limit is £200,000 and your accounting period is 6 months, the maximum AIA you can claim is £100,000 (6 ÷ 12 × £200,000).

This does not apply to first year allowances.

Accounting periods longer than a year but less than 18 months

If your accounting period is more than a calendar year but less than 18 months, the maximum AIA, small pools allowance and writing down allowance you can claim is increased.

For example, if your accounting period is 17 months your small pools allowance is £1,417 (17 ÷ 12 × £1,000).

This does not apply to first year allowances.

Accounting periods longer than 18 months

If your accounting period is longer than 18 months, you need to split this into 2 periods:

• a 12-month period
• any remaining balance - up to 12 months

Gaps and overlapping accounting periods

If there is a gap between your accounting periods, you need to add the gap period to the end of the year in your first accounting period.

If 2 accounting periods overlap each other, add the overlap part to your first accounting period.

If you need further advice

Contact us for advice on Self-Assessment.

Find more guidance about capital allowances.