Why the best VAT advice starts a long way from the VAT advice
A note for owners embarking on a major home renovation
Most people arrive with a VAT question. Can this project be done at 5%? Is the new part zero-rated? Will HMRC be comfortable? They're fair questions — the numbers on a serious renovation are large, and the rate you pay can swing the budget by a six-figure sum.
But here is the thing we've learned, partly from years of advising and, from doing up our own property developments: the VAT answer is almost never really a VAT question. It's a question about the whole shape of your project. When did the house last have someone living in it? How are the works being contracted and staged? What does the planning history actually say? What is the builder pricing against — and is that information even complete yet? The VAT falls out of all of that. Get the picture right and the rate largely looks after itself. Get the picture wrong and no clever tax argument will rescue it later.
So when we look at a project, we try to stand where you're standing and see it the way you see it. A few of the things we find ourselves watching:
The order you make decisions in. The kitchen designed after planning is granted, not before. The mechanical and electrical choices left until "later" — the most expensive word in any build. The point at which adding one more room stops adding value. These aren't tax points, but they shape the cost, the programme, and yes, in the end, the VAT.
Whether the money makes sense. A quiet sense-check on the build cost and the cost per square metre against what we've seen elsewhere is often worth more than any single line of advice. It's the difference between a number that's ambitious and one that's about to run away from you.
The evidence you'll wish you'd kept. So much of what protects a project a year from now is captured almost for free today — a dated photograph, a meter reading, a letter from the previous owner, a note of when the builder first walked the site. Nobody thinks about it in the moment. We do, because we've seen what its absence costs.
The windows that close. Some of the best savings are time-limited — reliefs that expire, decisions that are cheap now and dear later. Knowing the calendar is part of the job.
None of that is VAT. And that's exactly the point. It's because we look at the whole board that the VAT advice, when it comes, is sharp — grounded in how your project is really being built rather than in a rule read cold. Clients sometimes tell us the tax saving was the smallest part of what they got.
It's also why a few owners ask us not to do this just once, but to stay lightly alongside the project — a proper review at the outset, then short interim updates as things move, so nothing quietly drifts while everyone's heads-down on site. Think of it as a knowledgeable friend who has stood exactly where you're standing, looking over the whole thing with you — except that we do it for a living, and we've made most of the mistakes ourselves so you don't have to.
If you're doing up a home and want someone to look at it the way you do, we're always happy to talk.
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This note is general reflection, not advice on a specific project. Every project we work on is confidential; anything we share is anonymised.