Accountants for NHS doctors and GP partners
As an NHS doctor, your money arrives from more than one place. A consultant post with private clinics on top. A partnership profit share that never matches your drawings. Salaried hours plus locum sessions at weekends. Or an ordinary payslip, until a pension savings statement asks for several thousand pounds you had not budgeted for. It is rarely one question, but how NHS pay, pension input, self-employed profit and a company, if there is one, sit together in one return. That needs someone who already knows why a Form B carries a ten-week clock.
Note: Statutory figures for the tax year shown. Your own position is what decides the answer.
What we hear
What we hear from NHS doctors and GP partners
The questions and concerns that come up most in the first conversation.
Is a pension annual allowance charge coming, and is it right?
The annual allowance is £60,000 for 2026/27, tapering where threshold income exceeds £200,000 and adjusted income exceeds £260,000, by £1 for every £2 above that, to a floor of £10,000. A defined benefit scheme measures the pension input amount, the capitalised growth in your benefits, not what your payslip deducted, so a promotion can create a charge while contributions look unchanged. Unused allowance carries forward three years, and NHSBSA statements are often late and revised, so the figure is checked before anything is paid. The Scheme Pays calculator sets out the arithmetic.
Private or locum income on top of a payslip
NHS pay has tax and Class 1 taken at source. Private clinics, medico-legal work, teaching and invoiced locum sessions do not, and they stack on your NHS band, taxed at your top marginal rate with Class 4 at 6% to £50,270 and 2% above. Only NHS work is pensionable, and for GPs only through the practitioner routes, so anything drawn from a company as dividends builds no NHS accrual, and a tax saving has to be set against that loss. Consultants start at hospital consultant accountants.
Which expenses and subscriptions actually come off
Two rules run side by side. Against NHS salary: statutory registration fees, subscriptions to bodies on HMRC's approved List 3, where the British Medical Association entry restricts relief to 85%, and the flat rate for your occupational group. Against private or locum profit, on the wholly and exclusively test: indemnity for private and non-clinical cover, mileage between separate sites at the 2026/27 rates of 55p a mile to 10,000 business miles and 25p above that, CPD and equipment. Home to your first site is commuting.
Locum sessions, Forms A and B, and the certificates
Pensioning NHS work outside a salaried post is administrative, and the deadline depends on your role. A freelance GP locum uses Form A, approved by the practice, then Form B to PCSE, and work that ended more than ten weeks ago cannot be pensioned at all. That is accrual lost outright, not a penalty you can settle. Partners file the Type 1 Annual Certificate and salaried or solo GPs the Type 2 self assessment, both by 28 February a year in arrears. Sessional doctors start at accountants for locum doctors.
Partnership profit, drawings and a shifting profit share
A GP partner is taxed on a share of partnership profit, not on what was drawn, so drawings and the January bill rarely match. The practice files an SA800 and each share flows to the partnership pages of a personal return with Class 4 on top. Shares move when a partner joins, leaves or goes part time, and practice income needs reconciling to what PCSE paid, notional rent included. Partner-level work sits on accountants for GP partners.
How it works
How we work with NHS doctors and GP partners
- 01
One return across NHS pay, private work and partnership share
Every source is mapped first: P60s and P45s from trust posts, the SA800 share, private and locum profit, dividends and savings. Your accountant prepares one self assessment return from that picture, with Class 4 and any student loan deduction checked against the payroll position.
- 02
Annual allowance position checked, not accepted
A specialist reviews the pension input amount on your statement, tests whether tapering bites, brings forward unused allowance and works out what is left. Where a charge stands, mandatory and voluntary Scheme Pays sit side by side with the election deadline and the extended limb for a statement revised on or after 2 May.
- 03
Expense and subscription review, including earlier years
Employment expenses and self-employed deductions are separated properly, the correct flat rate taken for your occupational group rather than a generic figure, and each subscription checked against List 3. Earlier returns are amended where an under-claim is material, with the evidence for each claim gathered first.
- 04
Structure reviewed with the pension loss priced in
Where private or locum income raises the question, sole trader, partnership and company are modelled at your own numbers: corporation tax, the 2026/27 dividend rates, the cost of running a company, and the NHS accrual given up on dividends. The deadlines that follow, the ten-week locum window included, are tracked from the start.
Free calculators
Run the numbers before you send anything
Free to use, on 2026/27 rates. We ask once whether a specialist should check your figure, and skipping that still shows it.
- NHS Pension Scheme Pays CalculatorWork out a Scheme Pays election against settling an annual allowance charge yourself.
Free first call, then a fixed fee in writing
Talk to an accountant about your NHS income
Speak to one of our medical accountants about how your NHS pay, pension input, private or locum profit and any company sit together, and whether an annual allowance charge is coming. The scope and the fees are agreed with you first, and nothing here obliges you to go ahead.
- Medical work onlyNHS pension, practice accounts and private practice
- Read by a medical accountantYour enquiry goes to our accountants who work with doctors
- One position, not threePractice, pension and personal return read together
No obligation. If our specialists think your position is already right, they will tell you so.
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