Tax on Profesional Qualifications
Tax on Profesional Qualifications
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OneDs

Original Poster:

1,629 posts

193 months

Friday 20th January 2012
quotequote all
Does anyone have an answer to this from both perspectives provider & receiver

Company A sets up a Professional Qualification which requires an initial course, exam, course work assessment which costs X, following on from achieving the Qualification the individual must demonstrate Continuous Professional Development which requires an annual subscription/membership fee Y.

An Employee at Company B is accredited and maintains his CPD requirements.

How does:-

Company A: treat the income/revenue generated from the courses & annual fees, can this be offset against the cost of running them.

Company B: treat the PAYE requirements if they are to sponsor/pay for the course & annual fee

Employee: treat the tax requirements if the company doesn't sponsor them on this accreditation.

Does HRMC need to agree the status of the qualification to attract tax breaks?

Eric Mc

124,106 posts

282 months

Friday 20th January 2012
quotequote all
OneDs said:
Does anyone have an answer to this from both perspectives provider & receiver

Company A sets up a Professional Qualification which requires an initial course, exam, course work assessment which costs X, following on from achieving the Qualification the individual must demonstrate Continuous Professional Development which requires an annual subscription/membership fee Y.

An Employee at Company B is accredited and maintains his CPD requirements.

How does:-

Company A: treat the income/revenue generated from the courses & annual fees, can this be offset against the cost of running them.

Company B: treat the PAYE requirements if they are to sponsor/pay for the course & annual fee

Employee: treat the tax requirements if the company doesn't sponsor them on this accreditation.

Does HRMC need to agree the status of the qualification to attract tax breaks?
Company A is presumably a professional body - in this case operating through a limited liability company.
Professional bodies may be exempted from paying tax on their profits if they have educational or charitable status. You will probably find that some pay tax and others don't - depending on whether they are formally recognised as a proper professional body or one of the may "pseudo" professional bodies that spring up all over the place.

As far as tax relief for those claiming is treated, the whole question of allowability depends on a number of factors.

For a BUSINESS to claim the cost against its profits, the cost has to have been incurred wholly and exclusively for the purpose of the trade.

For an employee to be able to claim the cost (if they pay it themselves) then the cost must have been incurred "wholly, exclusively and NECESSARILLY" for the purpose of the employment. In other words, the employee can only get tax relief if the professional qualification was part of teh necessary atributes required for that employment. If the employer did not insist that the employee held the qualification, then the employee could not claim the costs as it was not a term of the engagement.

Depsite these restrictions, in reality, HMRC does not seem to question claims employee make for tax relief on professional subs.

pharmvrs

147 posts

177 months

Friday 20th January 2012
quotequote all
The link below should take you to the table of who is allowed to claim.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/list3/list3.htm

I presume Eric to claim its just a matter of calling the HMRC and requesting payback as such? Do you know if it is possible to claim retrospectively?

Eric Mc

124,106 posts

282 months

Friday 20th January 2012
quotequote all
pharmvrs said:
The link below should take you to the table of who is allowed to claim.
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/list3/list3.htm

I presume Eric to claim its just a matter of calling the HMRC and requesting payback as such? Do you know if it is possible to claim retrospectively?
If you don't complete a self assessment tax return, then you can claim using a Form P87