Darling increases tax relief on investment

Optical practices could benefit from new measures in the 2010 Budget aimed at helping small companies.

To 'help small businesses expand', chancellor Alistair Darling announced in last week's Budget that he was doubling the tax relief on purchases such as new practice equipment. The Annual Investment Allowance threshold has been doubled from £50,000 to £100,000 as part of a package of measures intended to help small businesses.

Marc Bennett of AEL Partners, specialist tax advisers to optical practices, explained: 'This is intended to incentivise practices to invest in updating their consulting rooms with OCT and other big ticket optical items. The tax relief works by immediately reducing the practice's taxable profits pound for pound with the amount of the expenditure incurred, up to a limit of £100,000.'