31 March 2008 is the last day for a small company, or 5 April for an unincorporated business, to incur expenditure on plant and machinery, which will qualify for a 50% first year allowance. After those dates, this allowance will be replaced with a 100 per cent allowance, but only on the first £50,000 of expenditure, with a reduced rate of writing-down allowances applying for expenditure in excess of £50,000.
31 March 2008 is also the final date for claiming the enhanced allowance for research and development expenditure for the transitional period which is accounting periods ending between 31 March 2002 and 31 March 2006.
If you have expenditure to make now, think through which treatment will be more beneficial for your business - and don't forget the changes in tax rates, which will affect the worth of the allowance claimed in terms of tax saved.
