Tax Planning · East of England
Tax planning in Cambridge
Tax planning reviews for individuals and directors in Cambridge: a personal tax review or a director remuneration review is £249, a combined business and personal review is £399, and a pre-year-end planning session for companies is £299. Fixed scope, written report, the same fee in Cambridge as in every part of England.
from £249 · fixed, per review
Next deadlines
- Online Self Assessment filing deadline and balancing payment due
- Tax year ends: last day for pension, ISA and dividend timing decisions
- Companies House accounts due 9 months after your year end (a 31 December year end files by 30 September)
- Corporation Tax payment, 9 months and 1 day after your year end (a 31 December year end pays by 1 October)
Who this is for
Tax Planning for Cambridge
Company directors in Cambridge deciding how to pay themselves, higher earners near the £100,000 personal allowance taper or the £125,140 additional rate, couples who could use both sets of allowances better, landlords and investors with gains to time, business owners approaching a year end with profit to deploy, and anyone whose affairs have grown more complicated than their current adviser has noticed.
What is included
Everything inside the fixed fee
- A review of your current position across income tax, National Insurance, dividends, Corporation Tax and capital gains as relevant
- Allowances and reliefs checked: personal allowance taper, marriage allowance, pension annual allowance, dividend and savings allowances, ISA use
- Director remuneration modelled: salary, dividends, pension contributions and benefits for the coming year
- Timing decisions quantified: dividends across tax years, capital expenditure before year end, pension contributions, disposals
- A written report with the recommendations, the saving from each and the actions in order
- A follow-up call to answer questions and agree what we implement for you
How it works
Tax Planning from Cambridge, step by step
Tell us your situation
A short message or call about what you do and what needs filing. We ask the questions that determine the right package and nothing more.
Fixed fee in writing
You receive one price for the work, confirmed by email before anything starts. It does not change if the job takes longer than we expected.
Send records, review the draft
Records come by WhatsApp or email. We prepare the draft, explain the figures in plain English and answer your questions.
We file, you get the receipts
Once you approve and the fee is settled, we submit electronically and forward the HMRC or Companies House acknowledgement the same day.
Why IGI
The IGI way of working, in Cambridge
No hourly rate and no surprise invoice. Cambridge clients know the fee for tax planning before they send a single document, and it stays fixed.
We work to the HMRC and Companies House calendar, not an appointment diary. Clients in Cambridge get reminders at 60, 30 and 7 days before each date that applies to tax planning.
Online only, UK based. There is no office in Cambridge to pay for, which is why the fee is the same here as anywhere in England; the work is done by people in the UK who answer the same day.
Continuity matters in tax planning: the person who prepared last year's work for your Cambridge business prepares this year's, and remembers what was agreed.
Plain English, with the numbers. Every draft for Cambridge comes with a short explanation of what the figures mean and what, if anything, you should do about them.
You stay in control of tax planning: drafts go to Cambridge clients first, with the figures explained, and nothing leaves us until you say so.
Local facts
About Cambridge
Cambridge is in East of England, in the CB1 postcode district, England. Income tax in England follows the UK rates: 20% basic to £50,270, 40% higher to £125,140 and 45% additional, with the personal allowance of £12,570 tapered away above £100,000. National Insurance, VAT and Corporation Tax are UK-wide, and Stamp Duty Land Tax applies to property purchases.
| Place | Distance | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Peter's Field | 0.5 mi | NW |
| Brookfields, Cambridge | 0.6 mi | E |
| Barnwell | 0.6 mi | N |
| Romsey Town | 0.6 mi | SE |
| Newtown, Cambridge | 0.7 mi | W |
| Butt Green, East of England | 0.9 mi | NW |
| Midsummer Common | 1 mi | NW |
| Jesus Green | 1 mi | NW |
Worth knowing
Rules that come up in this work
Dormant companies
Dormancy is a status that is easy to lose. The strict rule is no accounting transactions other than share capital and Companies House fees, which means no bank account activity at all in practice. Fees should be paid personally by the director. A company that traded and has stopped becomes dormant only after its final trading accounts and tax return are filed and HMRC is told.
The trading and property allowances
Not every small income needs a tax return. The trading allowance exempts the first £1,000 of self-employment or casual income and the property allowance does the same for rental income, each measured on gross receipts. They cannot be combined with rent-a-room relief on the same income, and claiming the allowance means giving up the expense deduction for that source.
Employer National Insurance
Employers pay National Insurance at 15% on each employee's earnings above the £5,000 secondary threshold, following the April 2025 changes. The Employment Allowance offsets up to £10,500 of this for eligible employers, which for a small team often removes the liability entirely, but companies where the director is the only employee do not qualify.
Workplace pensions and auto-enrolment
Every employer must assess its workers for automatic enrolment from the first employee's start date. Those aged 22 to State Pension age earning over £10,000 a year must be enrolled into a qualifying pension with minimum contributions of 8% of qualifying earnings, at least 3% from the employer, and a declaration of compliance made to the Pensions Regulator within five months.
Record keeping
HMRC requires records of all income and expenses, bank statements, invoices and receipts to be kept for at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline of the tax year they relate to, and companies must keep records for six years from the end of the accounting period. Digital copies are acceptable. Under Making Tax Digital the records must be kept in compatible software.
Allowable expenses
An expense is allowable against trading profit if it is incurred wholly and exclusively for the business. Materials, business travel other than ordinary commuting, a proportion of home running costs, software, insurance, professional fees, bank charges and protective clothing qualify. Client entertainment, ordinary clothing, fines and the private share of mixed-use costs do not.
Crypto records and reporting
HMRC treats cryptoassets as property. Swapping one token for another, spending crypto or gifting it are all disposals for Capital Gains Tax, and staking and lending rewards are income. Gains are computed under pooling rules with same-day and 30-day matching. From 2026 HMRC receives data from exchanges worldwide under the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework, so unreported activity is increasingly visible.
Questions
Tax Planning questions from Cambridge
How often should planning be reviewed?
Annually, ideally in the first quarter of the tax year so that decisions have the full year to work. Thresholds and rates change each April, your income changes, and the company's profit changes. Clients in our monthly packages get a planning conversation as part of the Complete and Premium tiers.
Will you implement the recommendations?
Where the actions fall within our services, such as setting the payroll salary, documenting dividends, adjusting the company's pension contributions or making an election, yes, as part of those services. Where they need a financial adviser, for example choosing pension investments, we tell you what to ask them.
What about the personal allowance taper and the £100,000 trap?
Between £100,000 and £125,140 of adjusted income the personal allowance is withdrawn at £1 for every £2, producing an effective marginal rate of 60%. Pension contributions and gift aid reduce adjusted income and are often the best use of money in that band. The review quantifies this precisely for your figures.
How does pension planning fit in?
Pension contributions get relief at your marginal rate, employer contributions are deductible for Corporation Tax and free of National Insurance, and unused annual allowance from the previous three years can be carried forward. For directors it is usually the most efficient extraction route after a basic salary. We calculate your headroom and the saving.
Do you recommend tax avoidance schemes?
No. We use established reliefs and allowances that Parliament intended: pensions, ISAs, spousal transfers, capital allowances, dividend and salary structuring, timing. We do not sell arrangements that depend on HMRC not noticing. If someone offers you a scheme that sounds too good, the £249 review will tell you why it probably is.
How much tax will a review save me?
It depends entirely on your position, and we would rather not promise a number. Common findings are a director salary set years ago at the wrong level, pension headroom unused, a spouse's allowances wasted, dividends bunched into one tax year and capital allowances missed. For most directors the saving exceeds the fee several times; where it would not, we say so before you pay.
Which deadlines matter most for tax planning?
The next four dates that apply to tax planning are shown at the top of this page, calculated from today. For Cambridge clients we diarise every one of them from the day you join and send reminders before each, so the work is done in good time rather than in the last week before a penalty.
How do I get started from Cambridge?
Message us on WhatsApp or email with a sentence about your business and what you need. We reply in working hours with any questions and a fixed fee for tax planning. Once you confirm, we tell you exactly which records to send and the work begins. Most Cambridge clients are set up within a day.
One message from Cambridge, one fixed price
Tell us what you need. You get one fixed fee in writing, and nothing is filed until you approve it.