Finance for dentists

Yes, and equipment is the most common thing dentists fund. Hire purchase is the usual route: you spread the cost over a term that suits the working life of the kit and own it outright at the end. The tax treatment is what makes the timing valuable. Under hire purchase the capital allowances are available on the whole capital cost once the asset is brought into use, not as you pay the instalments, so a £72,000 scanner installed a week before your year end produces a £72,000 deduction in that year while you have paid almost none of it. Installed a week after, the same relief slips a full twelve months. Tell us the delivery date before you sign, because that date is worth real money.

Often, yes, and there is a benchmark to judge it against. HMRC charge late payment interest at the Bank of England base rate plus four percentage points — 7.75% since 9 January 2026, on a base rate of 3.75% held at the Monetary Policy Committee meeting on 30 July 2026. That same rate applies inside a Time to Pay arrangement. So a tax loan is worth taking when it is priced below 7.75% and worth declining when it is not, and the comparison is arithmetic rather than opinion. Two caveats. Interest on a loan taken to pay personal tax is not deductible, so compare gross rates. And if the bill was a surprise, the fix is the forecasting, not an annual loan.

They give you the same total deduction over time and very different deductions this year. Hire purchase treats you as the owner: the full capital cost qualifies for capital allowances in the year the asset is brought into use, and only the interest element of each instalment is deducted as it accrues. An operating lease gives you no capital allowances at all — you deduct the rentals as you pay them, spread evenly across the term. So hire purchase front-loads the relief and leasing spreads it. Front-loading wins when you have profit to shelter now; spreading wins when profits are climbing and the deduction is worth more later. It also matters which entity is buying, because full expensing is only available to companies.

We may receive an introducer fee from Braemar Finance if you take out finance following an introduction from us, and we will tell you so at the time rather than leave you to find out. What that fee does not do is decide the advice. The affordability check runs against your actual accounts before any introduction is made, and the conclusion is sometimes that the borrowing is too big, the term is wrong, or the purchase should wait a year. We would rather talk you out of the wrong loan than earn a fee on it, because the accounting relationship is worth considerably more to us than the introduction is.

Faster than most applicants expect, and almost entirely determined by what you send with the application rather than by the lender. Braemar Finance underwrite in-house and specialise in healthcare professionals, so a dental practice is a business they already understand rather than a sector code to be interpreted. What holds applications up is missing paperwork. For equipment you generally need the supplier quote, the last two years of accounts and recent management figures; for a practice purchase, add the sales particulars, the NHS contract details and your personal budget. We assemble that pack before the application goes in, which is the part of the process we actually control.