Rural & Agriculture

Specialist accounting expertise for rural and agricultural businesses.

Rural & Agriculture

As specialist rural and agriculture accountants and tax experts, we understand the rural and agricultural sector and know that for our clients, it’s not just a business, it’s a way of life. Therefore, we’re passionate about helping our clients lives easier wherever we can, by being their trusted partner to take care of the compliance and offer ongoing advice, so they can focus on their core agriculture activity. Over recent years, we’ve helped many primarily paper-based farmers move to cloud solutions in preparation for Making Tax Digital (MTD).

We have a knowledge that we’ve built up over many years supporting the agricultural sector, but we always strive to keep up to date on any issues or regulations facing the industry so that we can keep our clients informed.

Based across Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, our experience extends across multiple agriculture businesses, ranging from family farms to large commercial agriculture organisations to rural hospitality and leisure businesses. Some of the types of businesses that we currently work with include:

rural and agriculture accountants

As agriculture accountants, we advise farmers of varying size and complexity. We provide them with the service that grows with their business, whether this is bookkeeping, VAT returns or the more complex issue of succession and inheritance tax planning. Being located in both Hertfordshire, just south of the Fenlands, and Cambridgeshire, our portfolio is primarily arable farming businesses but we also have some dairy clients, mixed farming and solely livestock farmers. As with nearly all farms these days, each of our clients have either one or several secondary income streams which are a result of rural diversification.

We advise on an array of renewable energy opportunities that lend themselves to our clients from large scale solar and wind farms to smaller scale biomass boilers and battery units. In these situations our advice often starts with the business structure or tax issues that arise from this very unique area of diversification.

Hospitality and leisure is so commonly seen within the rural industry these days and a very fast growing area for diversification. The businesses we deal with operate any one or more of the following: B&B’s, holiday lets, glamping and open farms. These opportunities are usually driven by the need to maximise the return on previously underutilised assets of the business. Our advice often centres around the VAT complexities as well as the best business structure to operate through, in order to take the business forward.

The Smart Accountants work with a number of property investment businesses. We provide ongoing annual accounts and taxation advice as well as the capital tax implications on sales and purchases of new property. We also have a sector specialism directly in construction & property.

We deal with liveries and riding schools ranging from just a handful of stables to some which house up to 80 horses.

The classification of rural business is quite broad. It encompasses a number of different clients from estate and public maintenance, veterinary practices, rural recruitment, precision farming services and other supply chain businesses to the rural and agricultural community. Our team have extensive theoretical and practical experience in advising agricultural and rural based businesses so we understand many different business types.

We’re can provide a wide range of services that can be tailored to your business, from outsourcing your entire back-office and attending board meetings to supporting just on the compliance. Some of our services include:

  • Business planning services

  • Reducing tax liabilities

  • Raising finance

  • Budgetary and financial control

  • Business restructuring

  • Bookkeeping and payroll

  • Capital tax planning

  • Succession planning and passing on the family farm

  • Technical and taxation advice

  • Property transactions

We appointed the firm as our first agricultural financial advisors when we changed from a tenancy to using a contractor to farm our land. Our experience has been wholly good. As well as providing annual farm accounts and tax computations efficiently and ahead of schedule, by taking the time to understand in detail the issues which relate specifically to us, the team have alerted us to money saving possibilities.

Tim Dye, Partner
db sharp & sons limited

“The team have helped us grow and become more professional. Dave has been invaluable in advising us. He has helped our accounts team so much and they now absolutely love Xero!”

David Sharp, D.B. Sharp and Sons Limited

“Stock taking was a nightmare and we kept everything on spreadsheets until we spoke to the team. Switching over to Xero was an easy process.”

Mick Ginn, Macron Store Hertfordshire
total negotiation group

“As our accountants and advisors, the Smart Accountants have always been on hand to support our business but recently they helped the sale of our business to an Employee Ownership Trust. Ultimately this transaction helped us with obtaining a fair price for the business, ensuring long-term succession, and rewarding our employees. The team supported us from the very initial advice and planning stage right through to the implementation and were on hand to offer their expertise throughout.”

Mark Cranstoun, Total Negotiation Group

“One of my previous headaches was always the absence of reliable management information and that often consumed my time unnecessarily. Since working with the team, they have implemented new systems, enhanced existing systems and they provide information on a monthly basis which is accurate and clearly communicated. This allows me to spend time doing what I should be doing.

Combine that with their sector expertise, knowledge and professionalism we would have no hesitation in recommending their services to anyone.”

Sheldon Paule, Cameron Kennedy

“We’ve always found the team to be responsive, helpful, and proactive in suggesting ways for us to improve our processes. In particular, we have been happy with the move from Sage to Xero, which has made our lives much easier as we grow our business.”

Jack Waley-Cohen, what3words

The Next Steps

If you’d like further information or to discuss how we can support your agriculture business, please get in touch and one of our specialist rural and agriculture accountants will be happy to talk to you. 

Please call us on 0845 606 9632, email us at team@thesmartaccountants.co.uk or complete the contact form below.