Every dental practice eventually pays for locum cover, for a holiday, a sickness absence, maternity leave or a gap between associates. The cost is a deductible business expense, but the tax treatment depends on the locum's status: a genuine self-employed locum is a contractor cost, not a payroll one, while a controlled or PSC-based arrangement can pull in status and IR35 questions. This guide explains how to budget for cover and treat it correctly.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax brings quarterly digital reporting to most unincorporated dentists from April 2026, and the days of a shoebox of receipts reconciled once a year are over. This guide explains the MTD thresholds and timeline, what digital records and quarterly updates actually require, and how to build bookkeeping systems that keep a dental practice compliant, accurate and ready for the quarterly rhythm rather than scrambling each January.
Once a dental practice has staff on the payroll, two obligations run every month: PAYE under Real Time Information, and the workplace pension under automatic enrolment. Both have hard rules and real penalties for getting them wrong. This guide explains how payroll and auto-enrolment actually work for a dental team, the contribution figures, the enrolment categories, and the compliance steps that keep you on the right side of the regulator.
A dentist leaving the UK cannot simply switch off UK tax by boarding a plane. Becoming non-resident is decided mechanically by the Statutory Residence Test, a single year away rarely achieves it, and the temporary non-residence rule can reach back if you return within five years. This guide sets out the pre-departure checklist: the residence analysis, split-year treatment, the final return and payments on account, and the traps to settle before you go.
A dentist who is UK-resident but works in another country can be taxable in both, and without relief the same income could be taxed twice. A double taxation agreement solves this two ways: a residence tie-breaker that allocates treaty residence to one country, and credit relief that offsets foreign tax against the UK bill. This guide explains both mechanisms and how a dentist actually claims relief.
An early-career dentist's pay and tax position changes shape at every stage: a salaried DFT first year, then a fork between hospital DCT and specialty training on a PAYE salary or the self-employed associate route. The tax differences are large and the transitions carry traps, above all the payments-on-account shock when you first go self-employed. This guide maps the progression so you see what is coming before it arrives.
Taking on your first employed team member, a nurse, a receptionist or a practice manager, costs considerably more than the salary you advertise. On top of the wage sit employer National Insurance at 15%, a workplace pension contribution, payroll running costs and a tail of on-costs. This guide builds the true loaded cost of a hire, explains what is tax-deductible, and flags the employee-versus-self-employed line that decides whether you run payroll at all.
When a dentist moves to or from the UK partway through a tax year, split-year treatment can divide the year into a UK part and an overseas part, so only the UK part is taxed as resident. It applies in eight defined cases, three for leavers and five for arrivers, with strict conditions and a priority order when more than one fits. This guide walks all eight with dentist examples, so you know which case applies and from what date.
A dental practice can give its team a range of small perks free of tax and National Insurance, but only within precise limits. The trivial benefits exemption allows gifts of £50 or less, the annual staff party has its own £150-per-head allowance, and the genuinely powerful lever is the employer pension contribution. This guide sets out what you can give tax-free, the cliff edges to avoid, and the £300 cap that applies to you as the owner-director.
A dentist coming back to the UK after a stint overseas faces three things most returners do not expect: a temporary non-residence rule that can tax income and gains realised abroad in the year you come back, a four-year foreign income and gains regime that only the long-term emigrant qualifies for, and the machinery of re-establishing UK residence and restarting Self Assessment. This guide walks all three so you arrive home without a surprise tax bill.
A mixed NHS and private dental practice runs two income streams that behave nothing alike: smooth NHS monthly payments with year-end reconciliation, and private fees that arrive treatment by treatment. This guide explains how to recognise each correctly, the patient-charges trap that distorts so many accounts, the VAT partial-exemption question, and how to split costs so your management accounts tell the truth.
The same dental equipment purchase can land its tax relief a whole year apart depending on when you buy. This guide is about the timing of the £1 million Annual Investment Allowance: when expenditure is treated as incurred, how the allowance is apportioned across short and straddling accounting periods, why buying just before or just after your year-end matters, and how to avoid wasting AIA.