Medway

Medway is not one town but five. Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham run into one another along the lower reaches of the river, and since 1998 they have been governed together as a unitary authority, separate from Kent County Council and home to around 280,000 people. The tax lives inside those ME postcodes are as varied as the towns themselves: dockyard heritage and regeneration in Chatham, Kent’s largest hospital in Gillingham, a tourist economy in Rochester, and commuter streets stretching from Strood to Rainham.

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 for individuals and small businesses across all five Medway towns and the villages around them. This page looks at the district as a whole. Each town also has its own dedicated page, including Chatham, Gillingham and Rochester, and that is where the street-level detail lives.

Three district-wide forces shape most of the tax work we do for Medway clients: the railway, the universities, and the building sites. High-speed rail links Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham directly into London, and that has turned Medway into commuter country, with all the tax complications that a London salary earned from a Kent address tends to bring. The Universities at Medway campus at Chatham Maritime supports a substantial student population, and the private rental market around it stretches across the district, from HMOs near the campus to family lets in Rainham. Meanwhile the waterfront regeneration that began when the naval dockyard closed, together with ongoing housebuilding across the five towns, keeps the construction trades busy, and most of those tradespeople work as subcontractors under the Construction Industry Scheme. Each shapes a recurring pattern of enquiries, and the sections below deal with them in turn: what triggers the tax obligation, what commonly goes wrong, and how we put it right.

Southeastern’s high-speed services call at Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham and Rainham on their way into St Pancras, with Rochester reached in just under 40 minutes. That connectivity has made Medway a serious commuter district, and commuter tax problems follow the season tickets home. Once income passes £100,000 the personal allowance starts to taper away, producing an effective 60% rate on the band above it, and Self Assessment usually becomes compulsory even when every pound is taxed under PAYE. Add the High Income Child Benefit Charge where one partner earns over £60,000, a share scheme at work or a side income, and a London salary earned from a Medway postcode needs more attention than a payslip suggests. We prepare those returns, use pension contributions to claw back the personal allowance where possible, and correct tax codes when HMRC’s estimates drift. We register new clients for Self Assessment, gather the paperwork needed for an accurate return, and file well ahead of the 31 January deadline.

The Universities at Medway partnership brings the University of Greenwich, the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University together on a shared campus at Chatham Maritime. A student population needs housing, and that demand feeds a private rental market running right across the district, from HMOs near the campus to family lets in Rainham. The compliance load on those landlords has grown sharply. Mortgage interest relief is restricted to a basic rate credit, residential property gains must be reported and paid to HMRC within 60 days of completion, and Making Tax Digital for Income Tax already applies to landlords with qualifying income over £50,000, with the threshold falling to £30,000 from April 2027. We keep Medway landlords compliant on all of it, whether the portfolio sits in one town or is spread across several. That includes preparing annual rental accounts, calculating the restricted finance cost relief, handling the 60-day Capital Gains Tax return when a property is sold, and setting landlords up for Making Tax Digital before it becomes compulsory for them.

Medway’s waterfront has been in near-continuous redevelopment since the naval dockyard closed in 1984, and housebuilding continues across the district. That keeps the construction trades busy, and a large share of them work as subcontractors under the Construction Industry Scheme. Contractors deduct 20% from payments before subcontractors see them, or 30% for the unregistered, and those deductions routinely exceed the true liability once tools, travel between sites and materials are counted. Refunds can currently be claimed back as far as the 2022/23 tax year, and for most CIS workers we act for, a repayment is the normal outcome rather than the exception. We work out the true tax position for the year, setting genuine business expenses against the 20% or 30% already deducted at source, and file the return that turns the excess into a repayment. Where a subcontractor has never had their historic deductions checked, we review the earlier years too, provided they still fall within HMRC’s time limit for a claim.

All eight of our services are available across the district, shaped to the situations above rather than as a standard bundle.

• Self Assessment tax returns. Prepared and filed for commuters, higher earners, directors and anyone HMRC has asked to file.
• Personal tax advice. Year-round planning: tax codes, the £100,000 taper, Marriage Allowance, dividend allowances, and P11D benefits.
• CIS tax refunds. Returns and repayment claims for subcontractors across the Medway towns, including backdated years.
• Landlord tax returns. Rental accounts and returns for portfolios in the ME postcodes, from a single let to a campus HMO.
• Capital Gains Tax. Planning before a sale and the 60-day report after it, so reliefs are claimed rather than lost.
• VAT returns. Registration once turnover approaches £90,000, scheme selection and quarterly filing, including the construction reverse charge.
• Making Tax Digital. Software set-up and quarterly filing for sole traders and landlords inside MTD, with preparation for the 2027 intake.
• HMRC investigations. Direct representation when HMRC opens an enquiry, so you are never facing the inspector alone.

Both are yours to use. This district page covers what Medway clients share: the commute, the rental market and the building trades. If your situation is rooted in one place, the regeneration sites around Chatham, the hospital workforce in Gillingham, Rochester’s tourist trade, start with that town’s own page, where we cover the local detail properly rather than repeating it here.

Use whichever page matches how you think about your own tax position. A landlord with lets in more than one Medway town, or a subcontractor moving between sites across the district, will usually find this page the better starting point, since it draws the common threads together in one place rather than splitting them across five separate pages. Either page reaches the same ACCA and ATT qualified advisers, working to the same fixed-fee terms, so the choice only affects how quickly you find the detail that matches your situation, not the standard of service you receive once you get in touch.

Anyone can call themselves a tax adviser, because the title is not protected. Credentials are how you tell the difference. Our advisers 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 any work starts. No hourly rates, no meter running on phone calls, and no invoice surprises when the job is done. The ACCA and ATT set examinations and require ongoing professional development, and both bodies hold members to a published code of conduct, so a qualified adviser is answerable for the advice given rather than working outside any framework. Being a registered HMRC agent means we can deal with HMRC directly on a client’s behalf, rather than the client relaying everything back and forth. Fees are agreed in writing before work starts and only change if the scope genuinely does.

If you are looking for a tax adviser in Medway, start with a short conversation rather than a form. Tell us what is going on: an unfiled return, CIS deductions you suspect were too high, a rental property you are about to sell in Rochester or Rainham, or a letter from HMRC you were not expecting. We will tell you plainly what needs doing, what it will cost, and how quickly it can be done, wherever in the five towns you happen to be. We will ask enough questions to understand the situation properly, then follow up with a fixed fee in writing for the work involved, so there is a clear quote to consider before anything is agreed. Most calls take fifteen minutes or so, and we are happy to speak by phone regardless of whether you are in Strood, Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham or Rochester. If HMRC has already written to you with a deadline attached, say so at the outset and we will prioritise accordingly.