Accountants for Doctors

Midlands Accountancy is a Birmingham firm acting as accountant for doctors across the West Midlands and further afield: GP partners and salaried GPs, hospital doctors with private practice or extra duties, locums working across multiple sites, doctors moving between those roles, and practice managers handling the partnership’s accounts. Few professions collect income sources the way medicine does. A doctor can be an employee, a partner, a self-employed locum and a private practitioner in the same tax year, each strand taxed and evidenced differently. The accounting job is keeping every strand clean and then bringing them together into one coherent return. We fit around clinical rotas, so almost everything runs through shared records and calls booked around your shifts, with face to face meetings when a decision deserves one. This page is part of our healthcare accountants hub, which also covers dentists, pharmacists and allied health professionals.

The structures doctors actually use

Salaried and hospital roles are employment, taxed through PAYE. GP partners are members of a partnership sharing profits under the partnership deed. Locum and private work is usually self-employment, and some doctors run private work through a limited company. It is common to hold several of these positions at once, and each has its own filing consequences. Whether to incorporate private or locum work is a genuine advice question, and we work it through with your figures rather than reciting a general answer. Doctors who incorporate on a colleague’s recommendation, or unwind a company because it felt like a nuisance, without either decision being modelled first, usually end up paying for it twice.

Untangling multiple income sources

A typical year might include employment income from a trust, partnership profit share, locum session fees, private consultation fees, cremation and report fees, teaching or examining income, and pension considerations threading through all of it. The tax return has to bring these together accurately, which is only possible if each source was recorded separately during the year. The single habit that most improves a doctor’s tax position is keeping a dedicated account for non-PAYE income so nothing arrives untracked. Private fees paid into the family current account are the classic version of this going wrong: they are not lost, but finding them again a year later costs you in fees what you thought you were saving in effort.

Locum work and the records it demands

Locum income is where records most often fall apart, because sessions are booked through multiple channels, paid on different timescales and evidenced by remittances in different formats. A locum needs a log of sessions worked, invoices raised, remittance advice for each payment, records of pension forms where NHS locum work is pensioned, and receipts for professional costs. GOV.UK sets out self-employed record duties, and our guide to accounting records for locum doctors turns them into a working system. Two things go wrong here more than anything else: sessions worked but never logged, so income is understated or simply unprovable, and professional costs left unclaimed because the receipt went the way of all receipts. Bring us records like that and the return is quick; bring us a year of mixed bank statements and we can still help, but reconstruction costs more.

What an accountant for doctors does for a GP partnership

GP practices are businesses with contract income, enhanced services income, reimbursements, staff and premises. Partnership accounts allocate profit between partners under the deed, deal with partner changes part way through the year, and feed each partner’s personal return. Partner changes are also where thin partnership records hurt most: a retirement or a new partner joining mid-year is straightforward when the ledgers are current and a small ordeal when they are not. Payroll for practice staff, with workplace pension duties, runs alongside through our payroll service. Our bookkeeping service keeps the practice ledgers reconciled against NHS statements so the accounts are built on checked figures, not assumptions; our medical practice bookkeeping checklist sets out what that routine should cover.

Returns, deadlines and the pension shadow

Almost every doctor with non-PAYE income files under Self Assessment, and partners file both personal and partnership returns. Where private work runs through a company, statutory accounts and a Company Tax Return follow through our company accounts service. Filing dates are on GOV.UK. The NHS pension scheme casts a long shadow over medical tax work: annual allowance questions and pensionable pay figures interact with the tax return, and while regulated pension advice sits with a financial adviser, we prepare figures both sides can rely on and flag when that advice is needed. Send us your pension statements when they arrive rather than filing them unopened; the charge they can foreshadow is much easier to plan for than to absorb.

Knowing your position before January does

Doctors with several income strands benefit from a running picture: what each strand earned, what tax is accruing, and what to set aside. A doctor whose locum income has grown quickly can otherwise meet a first tax bill, plus a payment on account, in the same month, which is an avoidable shock. We can give you that running view at whatever frequency suits the pace of your work.

Opening a file with us

We start with your role map: employments, partnership positions, locum and private work, and any company. For a quote we need that map, an idea of the volume of locum or private activity, and how your current records look. From there we give you a fixed scope and price covering bookkeeping, practice and personal accounts, partnership and personal tax returns, company compliance and management figures. Regulated pensions and investment advice, medical defence and contract disputes, and anything clinical or revalidation related belong with other advisers, and we are used to working alongside them.

Frequently asked questions

I only do occasional locum shifts on top of my NHS job. Do I need to file a return?

Possibly. Whether extra income triggers a return depends on its amount and nature, and GOV.UK sets out the current rules. Check early, because registering late creates penalties even when little tax is due.

Do you deal with the pension annual allowance?

We prepare and interpret the income figures involved and work with your pension statements, and we tell you when a charge may be in play. Decisions about scheme membership or paying charges from the scheme need regulated pension advice, and we coordinate with that adviser.

What should a new locum set up in week one?

A separate bank account, a session log, an invoice template and somewhere to photograph receipts. Those four habits, started early, make everything downstream cheaper and calmer.

Can you act for the whole GP partnership and the individual partners?

Yes, and it is usually more efficient, since the partnership accounts feed each partner’s personal return. Where a conflict between partners ever arose we would follow professional rules on acting, and we are transparent about that from the start.

My private work has grown. When should I think about a company?

When the numbers, your pension position and your plans say so, not at any fixed income point. It is a modelling exercise we run with your actual figures, including the costs a company adds, so you decide on evidence.

If your income has more strands than your records can currently show, request a quote and outline your roles, and we will propose a setup that keeps every strand clean.