David Jones, of David Jones Accountants, said that property owners could also claim capital allowances for expenditure on items such as cold water systems, sanitary ware, fire alarms, ventilation and air conditioning.
He added that under new requirements to be introduced in April, any seller of a property who could have claimed capital allowances during their period of ownership must do so as soon as possible in order to pass the residual value to the buyer.
From there, an agreed tax election will be made to establish this value and fix the claim for allowances for the buyer in the future.
He said these integral features had “most probably” been included in the original purchase price of the property and have not been separately identified.
'It's not too late'
Jones explained: “It is not too late to identify these features and make a retrospective claim for the allowance.
“However, it will be necessary to engage the services of a specialist surveyor to quantify the value of the features and make the claim for allowance direct to HM Revenue & Customs.”
Even if no action is taken to recover unclaimed allowances, Jones said that changes in tax law will eventually make it necessary for all owners to consider looking at this subject to make their property attractive to any future purchaser.
He cautioned: “For any fixtures that the seller could not claim, the buyer must take steps to value the qualifying fixtures within two years of the purchase of the property in order to fix the transfer value or the allowances will be lost.”