Covering ME13 Post Codes
Tax Advisers & Personal Tax Specialists in Faversham
ACCA and ATT qualified, HMRC-registered personal tax advisers serving Faversham: Self Assessment, sole trader and partnership tax, landlord and property income, capital gains, Making Tax Digital and HMRC enquiry support.
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Years Experience
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Kent towns covered
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Fixed Pricing
Kent’s oldest market town, and a modern tax picture to go with it
Faversham has been trading for a very long time. It appears in Domesday as one of only two Kentish towns with a market, the Charter Market still runs three days a week, and around 500 listed buildings mark out a centre that has never been rebuilt into anonymity. Brewing has gone on here since at least 1573, and Shepherd Neame, Britain’s oldest brewer, has operated from the same site in the middle of town since 1698. Out beyond the ring road the orchards begin: Brogdale Farm holds the National Fruit Collection, more than 3,000 varieties across some 150 acres, and commercial fruit growing has shaped ME13’s working year for generations.
What that adds up to, in tax terms, is a town where a great many people work for themselves. We are Kent Tax Specialists, a personal tax practice qualified with the ACCA and the ATT and registered as an agent with HMRC. We act as tax advisers in Faversham for sole traders, partnerships, licensees, growers, landlords and higher earners across ME13, from the town centre and the Creek out to Ospringe, Oare, Boughton and the villages on the downs.
Independents, makers and the market
The Charter Market, the food halls, the antiques trade around Standard Quay and the independent shops along the main streets support a working population that mostly invoices rather than clocks in. Makers, stallholders, artists, caterers, gardeners, therapists and consultants all sit in the same tax bracket of problems.
The first is knowing when a sideline becomes a business. Casual income above the £1,000 trading allowance must be declared, and a first year of trading means registering for Self Assessment by 5 October following the end of that tax year. The second is knowing what you can properly claim: stock, stall fees, market pitch costs, packaging and postage, a share of vehicle costs, and use of home where the work genuinely happens there. The third is the VAT question, which arrives quietly once turnover approaches £90,000, and which decides whether registration is compulsory or a choice worth making early. We prepare Self Assessment tax returns for Faversham’s self-employed and handle VAT registration and returns once the threshold is in view.
Selling online as well as in person
Most independents now trade in two places at once, the stall or the shop and a website or marketplace. Online platforms report seller income to HMRC, so the digital half of a business is visible whether or not it has been declared. If some of it never made it onto a return, coming forward voluntarily is treated far more favourably than being found. We quantify the position, bring past years up to date, and where HMRC has already opened an enquiry our HMRC investigation service deals with the inspector directly.
Pubs, hospitality and the brewing trade
Shepherd Neame runs close to 300 pubs and hotels across London and the South East, and a tenanted or leased pub is not a job; it is a business, with rent, wet stock, staff, kitchen margins and a VAT registration attached to it. Licensees file as self-employed or in partnership, often with a spouse, and the numbers rarely behave predictably from one quarter to the next. Around them sits a wider hospitality workforce that is heavily freelance: chefs moving between kitchens, event and festival staff, drivers, cellar and cleaning contractors.
The recurring issues are practical. Partnership profit shares need to reflect what each partner actually does. Payments on account calculated on a strong year land hard in a weak one, and can be reduced where profits have genuinely fallen. Living accommodation that comes with a role has its own tax treatment. We work through all of it as part of personal tax advice rather than as a once-a-year form-filling exercise.
Growers, agricultural contractors and diversified farms
The fruit belt around Faversham runs on a mix of family growers, agricultural contractors and self-employed labour, and farm profits swing with the weather in a way that few other trades experience. Farmers and market gardeners can use profit averaging, spreading taxable profits across two or five years to smooth the effect of a bad harvest against a good one, which can materially reduce a tax bill in a volatile run of seasons. Machinery, packhouse equipment, cold storage and vehicles bring capital allowances into play, and the timing of that expenditure can matter as much as the amount.
Diversification adds another layer. Barn conversions, holiday cottages, glamping and let cottages are property income, and since the furnished holiday lettings regime was abolished from 6 April 2025 they are taxed under the ordinary property rules, with mortgage interest reduced to a basic rate credit and the old capital allowances position closed to new spending. Letting income also counts toward the Making Tax Digital thresholds, which began in April 2026 for qualifying income over £50,000 and fall to £30,000 from April 2027. We prepare landlord and property tax returns and get records ready for quarterly filing through our Making Tax Digital service.
Land, property and the day you sell
Selling a let cottage, a paddock, a development plot or a second home triggers Capital Gains Tax, and the residential reporting rules are unforgiving: the gain must be reported and the tax paid within 60 days of completion. In a town of old buildings and long-held family property, the complications are usually historic. Decades of improvement works, periods when a property was lived in, land sold off separately from a house, and joint or inherited ownership all change the number. Our Capital Gains Tax service works the calculation before contracts are exchanged, so the reliefs are planned rather than discovered afterwards.
Bringing in a tax adviser in Faversham
Everything above sits inside eight services, all available locally: Self Assessment, personal tax advice, landlord and property returns, Capital Gains Tax, VAT, Making Tax Digital, CIS tax refunds for construction subcontractors working across Swale, and HMRC investigation support. Each has its own Faversham page.
The people doing the work are qualified with the ACCA and the ATT, and the practice is a registered HMRC agent, dealing with HMRC through official agent channels on your behalf. Fees are fixed and agreed in writing before anything starts, so the cost is known before you commit.
Covering ME13 and the villages
We act for clients across Faversham itself and the surrounding parishes, including Ospringe, Oare, Davington, Boughton under Blean, Selling, Throwley and Eastling. Most work is handled by phone, email and secure document exchange, which suits harvest weeks, service hours and a commute on the high-speed line alike, and we arrange a meeting whenever that works better.
Tell us the situation first
If you are looking for a tax adviser in Faversham, start with the facts rather than the paperwork. A first year of trading, a pub tenancy that has grown more complicated than expected, a bad season that has made payments on account look absurd, a cottage you are thinking of selling, or a letter from HMRC that arrived without warning: tell us what is going on and we will tell you plainly what needs doing, what it costs, and how quickly it can be done.
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Frequently Asked Questions
You can file your own return through HMRC’s online service, and for a single PAYE income with nothing else going on, that may be enough. A tax adviser earns their fee when your affairs have moving parts: self-employment or CIS work, rental property, income over £100,000, capital gains, or child benefit at higher earnings. In those cases the common outcome is that we find allowances and expenses that self-filers miss, and we take on the deadlines and HMRC correspondence so mistakes and penalties stop being your problem. Many Faversham clients come to us after one stressful January too many.
We work on fixed fees agreed in writing before any work begins, so the honest answer is that it depends on the job, but you will know the exact figure before you commit to anything. A straightforward Self Assessment return costs less than a landlord return with capital gains reporting, and both are quoted upfront. There are no hourly rates, no meters running on phone calls, and no surprise invoices at the end. Tell us what your situation involves and we will give you a firm quote, with no obligation to proceed.
Yes, where a face-to-face conversation is the right way to work. In practice most of our Faversham clients prefer to handle everything by phone, email and secure document exchange, because it fits around work and avoids anyone taking a morning off to deliver paperwork. Records are shared securely, returns are approved electronically, and you can reach your adviser directly rather than through a call centre. When a meeting genuinely helps, typically for complex planning or an HMRC investigation, we arrange one at a time and place that works for you.
An accountant typically covers the full breadth of a business’s finances: bookkeeping, annual accounts, payroll and company filings, with tax as one strand among many. A tax adviser, or advisor as it is sometimes spelt, works in depth on tax itself: Self Assessment, reliefs and allowances, capital gains, and dealings with HMRC. We are personal tax specialists, qualified with the ACCA and the ATT, which means tax is not a sideline to accounts work; it is the entire practice. If your need is your own tax position rather than company bookkeeping, a specialist adviser is usually the better fit.
Yes. We are a registered HMRC agent, which means HMRC recognises the practice as authorised to act on clients’ behalf. Once you appoint us and sign the agent authorisation, we can file your returns, view the relevant parts of your HMRC record, correct tax codes and handle correspondence and enquiries directly with HMRC for you. Alongside agent registration, our advisers hold ACCA and ATT qualifications, so the people doing the work are professionally qualified in tax, not just registered to submit forms.
Yes. Farmers and market gardeners can average their taxable profits over either two or five years, which smooths a poor harvest against a strong one and can bring a bill down significantly after a volatile run of seasons. Whether averaging helps, and over which period, depends on the size of the swing and the tax rates in each year, so it needs calculating rather than assuming. Capital allowances on machinery, storage and vehicles are the other lever, and the timing of that spending matters.
Once your gross income from selling passes the £1,000 trading allowance in a tax year, it needs declaring, whether it comes from a stall, a website or a marketplace. Below that figure, and with no other reason to file, nothing may be required. Above it you must register for Self Assessment by 5 October following the end of that tax year. Bear in mind that online platforms report seller income to HMRC, so the digital side of your trade is visible either way. We will confirm where you stand and file what follows.
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