Teeth and tax

Like many readers I suspect I deal with several dentists. Speaking to other accountants the subject of whether a dentist can enter into partnership with their spouse came up. Can this be done?

Obviously the non-dentist spouse would not be going anywhere near their clients’ teeth but they could carry out administrative work for the partnership – and some probably already are doing this as an employee.

Presumably as a partner it would not be a matter of justifying the amount of work done or are there hidden problems here?

The other question that arose in relation to this was whether having formed a partnership the business profits can be changed from year to year depending on circumstances.

For example in the unlikely event that there was a loss could this all be allocated to say the...