Passing it on
Business Property Relief on the pharmacy, 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 · Community Pharmacy
Specialists who read your pharmacy the way it actually works.
Most of your income is NHS money, assembled by someone else and paid to you a month or two in arrears, which makes it easy to misread. We turn it into monthly numbers you can actually use, get the VAT treatment right across the till, and plan the tax that follows from owning the business.
- Tax & structuring
- Monthly profit you can trust
- Buying, selling & exit tax
Let's talk
If your accounts can't tell you whether the NHS has paid you correctly, we should talk.
Bring us a recent set of figures and a dispensing month. We'll tell you what we see, whether that's money being left on the table, a structure that's costing you, or an exit worth planning for now.
ICAEW-regulated firm
CTA, the UK's highest tax qualification
ACA Chartered Accountant
Big-four trained in private client tax
What owners say
The people we do this for.
We’ve been with Saymur a few years now and the difference is in what we actually see. Monthly figures with dispensing, retail and services split out, so I can tell which part of the business is doing well and which we need to improve on. Our biggest issue has always been cash flow. Profitable on paper, but big swings month to month. The monthly information helps us understand the profitability side, and the cash flow projections mean we know what we’ve got coming and can plan around it rather than react to it.
We’ve been with Saymur from the start and never had reason to look elsewhere. Payroll, VAT, accounts and tax are all handled in one place and I don’t have to chase any of it. Whenever I have a question, they come back to me promptly.
What I value most is that Murtaza and the team go through the numbers with me and explain what’s driving the profit and what to look out for, rather than just handing over the accounts. That really helps when I’m making decisions.
The thing generalists miss
Most of your money comes from the NHS. Most accountants treat it like it came from a till.
A community pharmacy earns roughly seventy to ninety percent of its income from the NHS, and that income is never invoiced by you or paid in a single sum. The NHSBSA assembles it from dispensing fees, Drug Tariff reimbursements, Category M adjustments and the services you've delivered, then pays it over a month or two later.
What that makes hard to see is your real margin, because on most of what you dispense the price is set by the Tariff rather than by you. Profit comes from buying well against a figure you don't control, which is close to the opposite of how an ordinary shop works and how an ordinary accountant will read it.
We understand how a pharmacy actually earns, and we track the retained margin properly, so the management figures you get each month describe what the business actually earned rather than simply what happened to arrive in the account.
Monthly management information
Numbers every month that are actually right, not a generalist's best guess.
A monthly profit figure only tells you something if the income and the costs it relates to have been lined up, and in a pharmacy they usually haven't, because the NHS pays a month or two behind, a single till spans three VAT liabilities and stock is priced against reimbursement rather than cost. We build the pack so the numbers hold up before you see it.
01
Income matched to cost
Each month we match the dispensing income to the purchases that earned it, strip out the VAT correctly across zero-rated dispensing and standard-rated retail, and value the stock the way a pharmacy has to rather than the way a general practice template assumes.
02
One set of numbers
Because we're already inside the VAT, the return and the management figures are produced from the same underlying records, so you get a VAT position you can rely on alongside a profitability figure that agrees with it, rather than two sets that never quite agree.
03
The things that move a pharmacy
We forecast cash around the NHS payment lag so you know what's coming and roughly when, we track the KPIs that actually move a pharmacy month to month, and we report the handful of figures that genuinely tell you whether the business is working.
Gross margin34.8%
NHS : retail78 / 22
Items dispensed8,140
Avg item value£9.58
Staff / income21%
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 a structure has stopped working, 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 pharmacy throws up.
Most firms serving pharmacy are accountants, not tax specialists. That matters, because a pharmacy is an unusually tax-rich asset. It carries relief, it takes real structuring to grow, and the exit is where owners either keep the value or hand a chunk of it to HMRC.
Growing to a group
Holding-company structures for multiples, where profit and risk sit, group relief, and financing the next branch 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, earn-outs, and getting the deal structured before the offer, not after.
Taking money out
Extracting profit efficiently across salary, dividends and pension, and getting incorporation and goodwill right when you move from sole trader or partnership.
The day to day, done right
The parts of a pharmacy that trip up firms who don't know the sector.
Three liabilities, one till
Prescription medicines are zero-rated, the counter is standard-rated, and some of what you sell sits elsewhere again. Splitting one till across those correctly is where VAT returns go wrong, and where HMRC looks.
Margin you don't set
High value, fast moving, and priced against reimbursement rather than cost plus. Valuation, purchasing and profitability tracking have to reflect that, or the accounts flatter or punish you for no real reason.
Locums and status
Most pharmacies lean on locum cover. Getting employment status and the payroll treatment right keeps you clear of a PAYE bill you didn't budget for.
Buying, selling and valuing
A pharmacy is not valued like an ordinary business, and the NHS income is exactly why.
Value here is not a simple multiple of profit. The quality of the NHS income stream drives the number: prescription volume and its trend, local competition, the contract itself, and how much of the profit is really retained margin that shifts with each settlement. Pay on headline earnings without looking under 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 and negotiating through to a deal that stands up.
- 03
Due diligence
Testing the numbers, and the NHS income behind them, against what's being sold.
- 04
Completion
Net asset and stock adjustments, and the tax structure fixed before you sign.
- 05
After
Systems and management reporting set up so you know from day one how it's trading.
Why Saymur
You get a chartered tax adviser who knows pharmacy, dealing with you directly.
Tax specialists, not just accountants
The CTA is the highest tax qualification in the UK. Most pharmacy accountants don't hold it. Your accounts get filed either way; the difference is who plans, structures and protects the position around them.
Trained where the complex work is done
Big-four private client training, brought to owner-managed pharmacy. You get that depth without the layers, the delays or the fees that come with it.
Independent, not a rollup
We're an ICAEW-regulated firm, not a branch of a national consolidator. You won't be handed to a call centre or lose the person who actually knows your business.
Who you'll deal with
Abbas Gulamhusein
ACA · CTA
Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Adviser, and the person leading pharmacy work at Saymur. Trained in private client tax at a big-four firm before building the tax advisory side of the practice.
You deal with him, not a team you never meet.
- Chartered Accountant (ICAEW)
- Chartered Tax Adviser (CIOT)
- Private client and owner-managed business tax
- Saymur Accountants Ltd, Harrow
Questions owners 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 understands how your NHS income is built, whether your VAT return and your profit figure agree, 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.