Readers’ forum: Painful extraction

We act for a husband and wife who are dental surgeons in partnership and have been practising from premises that for many years they owned jointly with two other dentists.

Our clients have sold their practice to the other two practitioners and have made a substantial gain both on the goodwill of the practice and also on the premises.

The husband and wife continue to work for the new owners as part-time associates. They are both higher rate taxpayers before taking into account the income from their associate partnership. Our clients do not own any fixed assets or equipment and take a percentage of their fees net of technicians’ costs from the new owners. Two main questions arise.

• Do readers consider there is any threat to a claim for entrepreneurs’ relief on the gain arising from the sale of the premises (no rent was charged...