Welcome to another edition of the UNW Dental Bulletin.
As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, ‘Change is the only constant in life’. There have been many changes on several fronts recently. Some personal (the birth of my second daughter in June), some within UNW and several for dental professionals. The Dental Team said goodbye to Phil Collins, whom many of you will know, who left UNW to work in the motor industry – we all wish Phil all the best. We have had some recent additions; Trish and Kirsty. You can find out more about Trish, who features in our ‘Meet the Team’. Finally, Hannah Beattie has recently been promoted to Assistant Manager and we have all celebrated her success.
Changes for dentists are coming in thick and fast. Firstly for sole trade dentists, who are in the throes of submission requirements for Making Tax Digital. There is more information within the bulletin but in short, those who are captured by this will have to make quarterly submissions to HMRC, reporting their income and expenses for the period.
VAT is rarely in the headlines of dental publications, but as you will read further on, there have been some recent developments in a few areas. The most prevalent one is in respect of the recent Invisalign/HMRC battle. HMRC won their appeal and now Invisalign are to charge VAT on aligners from September. This will increase costs for dentists and practices will need to evaluate options on how to maintain their profit margins. If you would like to discuss this with UNW, please get in touch with me or one of the team. This recent case does bring into the spotlight the general trend for increasing amounts of cosmetic work and how HMRC are paying an interest in this type of work. Ending on a positive note, there was another recent announcement on the increased Capital Goods Scheme threshold, by which there can be cashflow planning opportunities when acquiring a property and/or undertaking significant redevelopment work. This is a complex area so please do contact Mark Hetherington or Ian Coulthard, who can advise further.
You will see from recent trends that goodwill values are taking a tumble. My article goes into more detail but what I will mention is that these are averages. Strong-performing practices are still achieving high multiples. Buyers are definitely performing more financial due diligence, scrutinising practice performance more closely. A large proportion of my time is spent helping practices to improve profitability, mainly in preparation for an exit. This is a dedicated service offering taking a deep dive into the business of running a dental practice, finding efficiencies and maximising return. It is essentially a Profit Improvement Growth Program but I have yet to come up with a snappy name!
Lastly, I wanted to highlight a huge UNW success in respect of a recent transaction that we advised on. Both UNW’s dental accounting team and our in-house M&A advisers were involved. Our ability to advise on deals like this using our award-winning M&A team is one area that sets us apart from other accountants, and what makes us unique in the dental sector. These combined powers resulted in our clients maximising value on exit.
I’m extremely proud of our ability to add value to all practices of any size and hopefully the content of this bulletin illustrates this. Perhaps this is one example of the constant being no change.
Mike Blenkharn
Partner & Head of Dental at UNW
