Passing it on
Business Property Relief on the trading home, the effect of the cap that came in from April 2026, and how to bring family or a manager into ownership without triggering a bill.
Chartered accountants & tax advisers · Care homes
Accountants who understand what a care home actually costs to run.
Your income arrives from four places on four different timetables, and the VAT on your costs is money you never get back. We build the numbers around that, and plan the tax that follows.
- Fee mix & occupancy
- Monthly profit you can trust
- Buying, selling & exit tax
Let's talk
If your accounts can't tell you which beds are making you money, we should talk.
Bring us a recent set of figures and a month's occupancy and fee data. We'll tell you what we see, whether that's margin being lost on the fee mix, a property structure that's costing you, or an exit worth planning for now.
What operators say
The people we do this for.
Before engaging Saymur, we lacked visibility and proactive guidance. Now our year-end runs smoothly, tax planning is sharper, and payroll across our homes runs effortlessly. Their insight and sector understanding have been invaluable.
I've worked with the father-and-son team, Abbas and Murtaza, for over ten years and found them extremely knowledgeable on both personal and business tax. Abbas is always responsive, and particularly outstanding on tax-efficient personal solutions.
The thing generalists miss
Four income streams, four timetables, and one figure in your accounts.
A care home doesn't have one revenue line. It has local authority beds paid at a rate set by the council, NHS continuing healthcare beds paid at another, self-funders paying a market fee, and third-party top-ups that sit somewhere between the two. Each is collected differently, uplifted at a different point in the year, and carries a different margin.
In most sets of accounts all of that lands as a single number called fee income. That single number can't tell you the thing that matters, which is that your self-funded beds are usually carrying your publicly funded ones. Change the mix by a few residents and your profit moves, while your headline turnover barely does. If nobody is tracking occupancy and average weekly fee against your break-even, you're running a business where revenue looks stable right up to the point it isn't.
We split the income the way the home actually earns it, track occupancy and fee against break-even every month, and give you management figures that show where the profit is really coming from.
Trading month — Fee income and occupancy
- Local authority funded (26 beds)
- £78,800
- NHS continuing healthcare (5 beds)
- £20,600
- Self-funded (11 beds)
- £61,900
- Third-party top-ups
- £4,300
- Total fee income
- £165,600
- Beds occupied / registered
- 42 / 48
- Occupancy against break-even
- 87.5% v 82%
Illustrative trading month, 48-bed home.
Monthly insights
Numbers every month that are actually right, not a generalist's best guess.
A monthly profit figure only means something if the income and the costs line up. In a care home they usually don't, because fees are billed in advance and funding arrives in arrears, agency cover lands unevenly, and the VAT on your costs never comes back. We build the pack so it reconciles.
Each month we split fee income by funding source, match staffing to the rota that actually ran rather than the budget that was set, and treat irrecoverable VAT as the cost it is instead of burying it. What comes out is a margin per occupied bed you can act on, not a figure pulled from the bank account that flatters you one month and frightens you the next.
We track agency as a share of total staff cost, because it is usually the single largest controllable line in the home and the one that moves fastest. We track average weekly fee by funding source, so you can see when a council uplift has failed to keep pace with your wage bill. And we track occupancy against break-even, so you know how much headroom you actually have.
We watch the things that move a care home: cash flow around late local authority settlements, so you know what's coming and when; the April pressure point where the National Living Wage rises before the fee uplifts land; and the handful of figures that tell you whether the home is really working.
Occupancy87.5%
Avg weekly fee£910
Staff cost / income58%
Agency % of staff cost11%
EBITDARM margin24%
Illustrative monthly KPIs
Most firms hand you a report. Because the person reading your numbers is a chartered tax adviser, ours flags when to change how you take money out, when the property is sitting in the wrong place, and when an exit is worth planning for. We read the pack with you, and act on it.
Where a generalist stops, we start
Filing the accounts is the floor. The value is in the tax that a care home throws up.
Most firms serving the care sector are accountants, not tax specialists. That matters, because a care home is a property-heavy, capital-hungry, tax-rich asset. It carries relief, the property decisions are close to irreversible, and the exit is where owners either keep the value or hand a chunk of it to HMRC.
Growing to a group
Holding-company and operating-company structures, whether each home sits in its own SPV, where the property and the risk sit, group relief, and financing the next home in a way that doesn't cost you at sale.
Selling well
Asset sale against share sale, Business Asset Disposal Relief at eighteen percent on the first million of gains, how the freehold is treated in the deal, earn-outs, and getting the structure fixed before the offer, not after.
Property and capital allowances
Refurbishment and extension spend, claiming capital allowances on plant and integral features, SDLT on acquisition, and whether the freehold belongs in the trading company, personally, or in a pension.
The day to day, done right
The parts of a care home that trip up firms who don't know the sector.
The cost you never get back
Care is an exempt supply. You charge no VAT on fees, which sounds like a saving until you realise you can't reclaim any either. The VAT on agency staff, refurbishment, food and maintenance is a real cost, and it belongs in your margin calculation rather than hidden in the overheads.
Agency, wages and status
Agency cover is usually the largest controllable cost in the home and the fastest moving. Add annual National Living Wage rises that land before fee uplifts do, sponsorship costs for overseas recruitment, and complex shift and overtime patterns across sites. Getting the payroll and the status treatment right keeps you clear of a bill you didn't budget for.
Uplifts and the mix
Council rates are set for you, self-funders are not, and the gap between them is where your profit lives. Knowing your average weekly fee by funding source, and what an uplift actually did to it once wages moved, is the difference between negotiating from evidence and accepting what you're offered.
Buying, selling and valuing
A care home is not valued like an ordinary business, and the beds are exactly why.
Value here is not a simple multiple of profit. It turns on adjusted earnings per registered bed, the split between publicly funded and self-funded residents, occupancy and its trend, the regulator's rating, the condition and tenure of the property, and how much of the current profit depends on staffing levels that can't hold. Pay on headline earnings without testing that, and you've bought a figure that can move. We do the diligence that stops it.
- 01
Appraisal
Reading the sales memorandum and telling you whether it's worth pursuing at all.
- 02
Offer
Shaping a supportable offer around earnings per bed, and negotiating through to a deal that stands up.
- 03
Due diligence
Testing occupancy, fee mix, staffing models and funding contracts against what's being sold, and finding the liabilities that aren't in the pack.
- 04
Completion
Property and stock adjustments, financing in place, and the tax structure fixed before you sign.
- 05
After
Systems, payroll and management reporting set up so you know from day one how it's trading.
Why Saymur
A twenty-year-old family practice, with the care sector as one of its deepest specialisms.
Saymur was founded in 2006 and has been a family practice since. We act for care home owners and operators across the UK, from single-site owners to groups running several homes, and the length of those relationships is the point. Clients who have been with us ten years and more have dealt with the same people throughout.
We know what makes a care home different
High and rising staff costs, agency usage and complex shift patterns. Local authority funding delays that hit cash flow. Mixed income streams and complex fee structures. Property ownership, refurbishment and long-term financing. Multi-site operations and group structures. Most accountants treat a care home like any other SME, and it is not one. It is property-heavy, people-heavy and operationally intense, and the numbers have to be built around that.
A family practice, and the continuity that comes with it
Founded in 2006 and run by the same family since. No account manager, no annual handover, no explaining your business again to someone new. You get the same people year after year, which is why so many of our care clients have been with us for a decade or more.
Specialists in the tax, not just the accounts
Care homes are capital-hungry and property-heavy, and the decisions about where the freehold sits, how a group is structured and how an exit is timed are close to irreversible. That work needs a Chartered Tax Adviser rather than a generalist, and most firms serving the sector do not have one.
Who you'll deal with
Abbas Gulamhusein
Tax Partner · ACA · CTA
Heads up tax. A Chartered Tax Adviser who trained in private client tax at Deloitte, covering personal, corporate and capital taxes. He is the person care operators deal with on structuring, succession and exit planning.
Slide 1 of 3Questions operators ask
The things worth knowing before you pick an accountant.
Filing your accounts on time is the floor, not the ceiling. The real questions are whether anyone splits your fee income by funding source, whether you know your occupancy against break-even each month, whether irrecoverable VAT is being treated as the cost it is, and whether someone is planning the relief on the business and the eventual exit. Most general firms do the first and none of the rest.