Tax Benefits of Demountable Partitioning

Because demountable office partitions is able to be relocated there is the opportunity for claiming capital allowances against tax.

The judicial precedent for this is the case Jarrold (H M Inspector of Taxes) vs. John Good and Sons Ltd. (Court of Appeal 1962) and we can provide a transcript of this upon request.

It should be noted that key to the success of John Good’s claim was that they had specifically instructed their architect that the interior of their new office should be sufficiently flexible to allow for the changing requirement of the business.

In practice John Good didn’t actually move their partitioning to any great extent, but the Court of Appeal held that it was the intention that it should be moved that was the determining factor. Accordingly John Good was allowed to classify the partitioning as plant and claim capital allowances at 25% p.a., the rate appropriate at the time.

I believe that currently ‘small’ companies can claim tax relief on 40% of the cost in year one; ‘large’ companies at 25%. All companies can then claim relief indefinitely on 25% of the reducing balance. The government has indicated its intention to extend the scope of the year one 40% relief to other companies. An end user can therefore receive a contribution towards the installed cost of around 12% in the first year of installation.