Why did Ed and Tommy start Medics’ Money?

Medics’ Money is run by Dr Tommy Perkins and Dr Ed Cantelo, who is not only a GP trainee but also a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Advisor with nine years’ experience at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP London.

The problem

The cost of training is rising and the recent Health Education England document on improving junior doctors working lives identified ‘rising costs of developing as a professional’ as a significant cause of low morale. Surprisingly this document did not mention that claiming tax rebates could make training up to 40% cheaper. Unfortunately, a lot of the information provided to doctors to help them claim is out of date and unnecessarily onerous. Most of this information is vague, advises writing letters to HMRC and advises doctors to use “form P87”. The existing guidance often fails to explain the scope of all expenses that can be claimed. Using form p87 is NOT recommended by us as it allows for costly mistakes. It is also NOT necessary to write to HMRC even if claiming exam expenses. Our guides help doctors avoid these mistakes using HMRC’s online Personal Tax Account.

Our solution

Medics’ Money uses Ed’ s unique skillset to help doctors reduce the costs for doctors by claiming tax rebates for free and online. We can also connect doctors to our specially selected network of specialist accountants and advisors to empower doctors to make better financial decisions.

Our objectives

1. To enable 100% of doctors to claim 100% of tax relief available using our free step by step guides. For those doctors who cannot claim themselves, we will recommend a specialist medical accountant, verified by Medics’ Money with reviews from doctors and practice managers. This will significantly reduce the cost of training.
2. To empower doctors to make better financial decisions. We will do this by providing access to high quality advice from leading experts for free in our blog.

Our History

As trainees we were exasperated by the costs of training as a doctor and we found that many of our colleagues felt the same. Despite this, we found that many of our colleagues were not claiming tax rebates which could help them claim back potentially thousands of pounds.  Back in 2014 we began helping our friends and colleagues to claim tax rebates. Through word of mouth we grew until we had claimed over £300,000 of expenses on behalf of doctors. We realised many doctors were not claiming tax rebates, but as full time NHS doctors ourselves we recognised we couldn’t personally help every doctor. In the wake of the junior doctors’ strikes, several Health Education England reviews identified the rising cost of training as a key contributor to low morale, but surprisingly did not mention the opportunity to reduce the cost of training by up to 40% by claiming tax rebates. Colleagues were overpaying thousands in tax and little was being done to raise awareness and help them. In 2018, updates to HMRC’s Personal Tax Account software allowed us to use Eds expertise to write guides for doctors to claim these rebates themselves online. These guides will allow many more, potentially all doctors, to benefit from our expertise to claim a tax rebate.

However, we also recognised that some doctors need an accountant but struggled to find a good one. This led to them struggling on their own, making costly mistakes such as;

1. Failing to claim all allowable professional expenses for all applicable tax years.
2. Completing self assessment themselves, but not including ALL claimable expenses resulting in paying up to thousands of pounds extra tax
3. Payroll errors that went undetected, resulting in paying too much tax.
4. Using non-specialist accountants who had advised them to start a Limited company to “save tax” but had failed to claim expenses properly or advise on the implications of leaving the NHS pension scheme. Potentially wiping out any savings from working as limited company.
5. Locum GP’s who were no longer covered by the NHS death in service benefits and had not arranged replacement cover, potentially leaving huge liabilities for their family if they should die.
6. High earning doctors with a spouse as a lower rate taxpayer who had not taken advice on working tax efficiently.

So we began building a nationwide network of reputable specialised medical accountants. We verify each firm and reject any non-specialist accountants that don’t meet our high standards. We developed our website to match doctors to a specialist medical accountant.

We’re very much at the start of our mission, but our aims are:

1. To enable 100% of doctors to claim 100% of tax relief available using our free step by step guides. For those doctors who cannot claim themselves, we will recommend a specialist medical accountant, verified by Medics’ Money with reviews from doctors and practice managers. This will significantly reduce the cost of training.
2. To empower doctors to make better financial decisions. We will do this by providing access to high quality advice from leading experts for free in our blog.