The cafés, bakeries, restaurants and food shops on Golders Green Road all meet the same VAT question at the till — hot or cold, eaten in or taken away — and the answer has to be recorded sale by sale. The rules, and how to set a till up so the split stands up to an inspection, are on our restaurant page.

• Restaurant accountants in London

When you make a Gift Aid donation the charity reclaims basic-rate tax, but if you pay at a higher rate the additional relief is yours and it only comes through your tax return. A great many people give substantially and never claim it. Keep a record of donations through the year and we will make sure the relief is taken.

Golders Green has a concentration of independent food retail and hospitality, much of it family-run and often over more than one generation. Two themes come up more here than anywhere else we work.

The first is VAT on food, which is genuinely difficult: the same item can be zero-rated or standard-rated depending on temperature, packaging and where it is eaten, and the answer is decided at the point of sale rather than in the accounts.

The second is succession — passing a business to the next generation without an avoidable inheritance tax charge. Business relief can be very valuable and is easy to lose through the way a company is structured or through holding assets outside it. It rewards planning years ahead, not months.

• Restaurants, cafés and takeaways
• Inheritance tax
• Estates and wills
• Accountants in Hendon
• Accountants in Finchley

Golders Green is home to many charities, trusts, synagogues, schools and community organisations, and their accounting obligations are genuinely different from a company’s. The people running them are frequently volunteers who inherited the books from a predecessor and have never been told what the requirements actually are.

Charity accounts follow their own framework

Registered charities report under the charities SORP rather than ordinary company accounting, and the differences are substantial: income is analysed by source and by restriction, expenditure by activity, and funds have to be distinguished between unrestricted, restricted and endowment. A donation given for a specific purpose is not general income and cannot be spent as though it were.

Independent examination or audit

Above certain income levels a charity’s accounts must be scrutinised externally — by independent examination at lower levels and by audit above them — and the trigger can also come from the value of assets or from the governing document itself. Trustees are often unaware they have crossed the line, because the level is based on gross income rather than on anything they think of as turnover.

Gift Aid on the charity side

Claiming Gift Aid means holding a valid declaration for each donor and keeping records that connect the declaration to the donation. Claims are made to a deadline, so a charity that has never claimed can usually go back some years — but not indefinitely. Small cash donations may qualify under a separate scheme with its own conditions. For an organisation that has been collecting for years without claiming, this is often the single largest sum available to it.

• Compliance and statutory accounts
• Bookkeeping

In Golders Green and Temple Fortune we are often asked how parents should help a child onto the property ladder. How the purchase is set up makes a big difference to the tax.

If a parent who already owns a home buys the flat in their own name, it is an additional residential property. The higher-rates stamp duty surcharge applies, which is 5% on top of the normal rates. When the flat is sold later, any gain is the parent’s. Capital gains tax on residential property is 18% or 24%, and a UK resident has to report and pay it within 60 days of completion. If instead the child buys in their own name, with a gift or a loan from the family, none of that applies to the parent. But the family then needs to be clear whether the money was a gift or a loan, and what that means for inheritance tax.

Settle the structure before you instruct solicitors, not after. Golders Green is in the London Borough of Barnet. Our pages for accountants in Finchley and accountants in Barnet cover the rest of our local work, and our page for accountants in North London covers the wider area.

• Accountants in Finchley
• Accountants in Barnet
• Accountants in North London
• Stamp duty calculator

Golders Green station is on the Edgware branch of the Northern line, which only joins our branch at Camden Town, so the bus is the direct way: routes 13 and 460 run from Golders Green and stop at Mountfield Road on Regents Park Road, close to the office.

You do not have to come in: you can work with us entirely by phone, email and video call, and we respond within one working day.

Golders Green is in the London Borough of Barnet, so Barnet Council sends your business rates bill and deals with premises licences, street trading and planning. None of that goes on a tax return, but rates are a fixed cost that can be relieved or appealed, and licence fees and timings belong in any plan for opening or changing premises.

The NW11 postcode lies wholly within Barnet. Food premises carry a rates position worth reviewing whenever the use changes, since a change of use can change the valuation and it does not update itself in your favour.

Small business rate relief is set nationally and applied by the council: a business with one property whose rateable value is below £15,000 can get relief, and below £12,000 the relief is 100%. Taking on a second property can take it away from the first, so it is worth checking before you sign a lease rather than after the bill arrives.

• Barnet Council: business rates
• Barnet Council: business rates discounts, exemptions and relief
• Barnet Council: licences, permits and registrations

The services we provide in Golders Green include personal tax and self-assessment, VAT returns and registration and payroll. Each has its own page with what is included and how we work.