Simon Bayley, commercial director at Foundation Home Loans, has criticised comments made by a speaker at the recent ASTL annual conference over extra taxation of landlords who used a limited company vehicle for their buy-to-let portfolios.

Tax adviser Nick Cartwright had warned that putting buy-to-let properties into a limited company to avoid paying higher rates of income tax could instead result in double taxation.

But Bayley said that if there was a better advertisement for using a good accountant, he had yet to hear it.

He said: “Frankly the comments made by the speaker were a great advert for accountants but also another misleading headline maker sending out a negative message to landlords at a time when this is a well proven method of mitigating some of the extra burden of taxation that has hit the industry in the past 12 months.

“Of course, taking the extreme example used by the speaker, a landlord might indeed have an issue, but that is why taking good advice is so important. I think the industry would appreciate that if experts are going to pontificate about the possible pitfalls, at least they could prepare a rounded argument to ensure proper balance rather than just a crude way of creating alarmist headlines.”