A £400,000 office bought on 30 September 2026 owes nothing to the Capital Goods Scheme — and the UK finance manager who files that VAT return has just saved nine annual adjustments worth £28,800.
That number comes from Revenue and Customs Brief 7 (2026). From 29 July 2026 the capital expenditure threshold for land, buildings and civil engineering works rose from £250,000 to £600,000, excluding VAT. The new limit applies to land acquired on or after that date, and to buildings and civil engineering works acquired, constructed, refurbished, fitted out, altered or extended on or after it. Computers and computer equipment acquired on or after 29 July 2026 left the scheme entirely. Ships, boats and aircraft are unchanged.
Two things make this expensive.
The first is that the change is not retrospective in the direction people assume. An item already a capital item under the old threshold stays in the scheme to the end of its adjustment period. So a warehouse bought on 28 July 2026 for £400,000 is in for ten intervals, and a near-identical one bought on 30 September 2026 is out. One day of difference on the completion statement, ten years of difference on the VAT return.
The second is that every free answer still quotes the old figure. Type the question into a chatbot and it returns £250,000, the number in almost every page ever written about the scheme. The failure is silent: nobody gets an error, the business simply starts making adjustments it does not owe, or keeps ten years of records for an asset that left the scheme the day it was bought.
CGS Threshold Check is a browser extension plus a free web page running the identical code. You give it seven things: the kind of capital item, the spend excluding VAT, the date it was acquired or the work was done, the input VAT charged, taxable use in the first interval, taxable use in this interval, and the date this interval ends.
It returns seven. Which limit applies and why. In the scheme or out. Which interval you are in, out of how many. The adjustment for this interval. Which way the money moves — repay to HMRC or reclaim. What is still at stake if taxable use stays where it is. And the date the final adjustment falls.
Worked through: an office, £400,000 excluding VAT, acquired 28 July 2026, £80,000 of input VAT, 100% taxable use in the first interval, 60% now, interval ending 31 March 2028. The old £250,000 limit binds it, so it is in for ten intervals. You are in interval 2. The adjustment is £80,000 divided by ten, multiplied by the forty point drop in taxable use: repay £3,200 to HMRC. Another £25,600 is still at stake across the remaining intervals, and the last adjustment falls on 31 March 2036.
Now change one field. Move the acquisition date to 30 September 2026. The limit becomes £600,000, £400,000 is under it, and every other line drops to zero. That £3,200 plus £25,600 — £28,800 across intervals two to ten — is money that would have gone to HMRC on the strength of a threshold that no longer applied.
The check is free, unlimited, with no key and no sign-up, in the popup and on the web page. The paid version exists on a different axis: it exports the whole interval schedule as .csv so it can sit in the working papers, and it sets reminders so each interval end reaches you before the return is filed. A UK VAT specialist bills roughly £150 to £300 an hour, and a written opinion on one capital item runs to several hours.
Install it unpacked in Chrome or Edge, or open the web page and type the completion date. The date is the whole answer.
Free in your browser (the same rules): https://getreadystack.com/tools/cgs-threshold-check-2026
Licence ($60, once, 7-day refund): https://buy.polar.sh/polar_cl_DXX3bq3ADU6ptiv04a8nPAfZM6esWciIyUsgh0Uu3EX
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