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Business Tax Planning

Tax will have a significant impact on your business, but its complexity means it can be difficult to make the right decisions. We’ll provide advice that ensures compliance and helps you achieve your goals.

Contact Stuart Petrie

  • Stuart Petrie
    Meet the team

    The team

  • Small Businesses. Start-ups. SMEs.

    Who we can help

  • Accounts & Tax Compliance. Employee Share Schemes. Management Accounts. New Business Set Up. Outsourced Business Services.

    How we can help

EXPERT TAX ADVICE THAT’S ALIGNED TO YOU

Tax can seem onerous, but with our effective planning it can be mitigated and give you the peace of mind that your business is tax-compliant. At any stage of your business lifecycle, from start-up to exit, we’ll tailor our tax planning advice to match your situation and ambitions.

As well as making sure you meet your tax obligations, our advice can maximise your cashflow to help you build your business or allow you to extract the rewards you seek tax-effectively. By thoroughly understanding your business, our experts will align their advice accordingly and save you the need to invest heavily in an in-house tax resource.

GAIN FROM OUR VALUABLE TAX KNOWLEDGE

Our experienced team acts for many owner-managed businesses, from sole traders and partnerships to LLPs and companies. Whether your business is long-established or young and growing, we’ll partner with you to bring you the benefit of our experience, our comprehensive services and commercial insight.

We appreciate you don’t have time to explore and understand all the intricacies of tax compliance and tax reliefs. There’s no reason why you should, when our expertise is on hand to guide your tax planning in areas such as:

  • Advising on the most beneficial vehicle for your business, whether that’s sole trader, partnership, LLP or company.
  • Identifying potential tax opportunities before you commit to major decisions.
  • Advising on tax-efficient withdrawal of profits through salaries, dividends, pension planning, company loans or share options, to minimise tax liabilities.
  • Succession planning.
  • Exit planning.

BENEFITTING FROM TAX RELIEF

Ensuring you have the best qualified and motivated staff can be a challenging expense or simply unaffordable, particularly for younger and smaller businesses. However there are incentives, such as shares and share options, which you can use to tempt them and keep them committed. We’ll explain how to implement these with optimum tax-efficiency both for your employees and you.

As you develop your business, you may be eligible for R&D tax relief which can make a substantial difference to your bottom line. There’s a common misconception that suggests these reliefs are only available to tech or science companies, but even if your business isn’t in those categories, you might still be eligible. We can advise on this and help you claim.

GROWING YOUR BUSINESS

As your business grows, so will your tax exposure and liability. By knowing your business well, we can predict how your tax will be affected and plan to mitigate the impact. For example, we’ll assess the possible tax risks and identify the capital allowances and other potential tax reliefs available on your major expenses, including equipment and property.

We’ll also advise you if your business is outgrowing its original structure and a restructuring would be beneficial for tax purposes. This could mean splitting the business into different structures or perhaps allowing a group of shareholders to exit. By using our close knowledge of your business, we can take a proactive approach that could offer you more options.

ENJOYING THE REWARDS AND RETIREMENT

It’s not the taxman who’s worked hard for your business – it’s you. So it’s only right that you should be able to extract profits from it in the most tax-efficient way possible.

There are several factors involved here, both commercial and tax-related. We’ll advise you on how profits can be extracted without negatively affecting the performance of the business and how it’s perceived by others, including your customers. How much you extract and when will also be influenced by how close you are to your own business exit and retirement. Our advice will take all this into consideration.

We’ll also ensure that when it comes to selling it, passing it on to the next generation or even to the management and employees, your business is in the best possible tax position to make it attractive, ensure it’s not a burden and that it will provide a comfortable future for you.

  • AAB's private client tax team deliver clear advice in understandable terms so we can appreciate how effective planning can lead to benefits for the whole family. They have taken away the worry and doubt for us.

    Alex Wiseman

  • I contemplated transferring my business to a limited company and I knew I could rely on AAB to make the process as straightforward as possible whilst providing the accounts and tax advice to enable me to make the right decision.

    Colin Brown

  • AAB’s Corporate Finance team provided us with expert financial and commercial advice within an extremely tight window within one working day of it being requested. We were against a very tight deadline and without the team we would not have met it.

    Paul Mosson, Law Society of Scotland

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  1. Blog11th Mar 2024

    Michaela McCombie, author of blog about PAYE tax codes

    New Tax Year, New Tax Code?

    With the new tax year approaching and ever-changing income tax rates and allowances, there is an increased importance of ensuring your PAYE Tax Code is correct.   PAYE AND TAX CODES Every employee registered in an organisation’s payroll system will…

    By Michaela McCombie

    View more
  2. Blog13th Feb 2024

    Gillian Rushton, author of blog about HMRC One To Many Campaign

    HMRC’s ‘One to Many’ Campaign – Targeting Undeclared Dividend

    HMRC are now issuing letters to business owners under a ‘One to Many’ Letter campaign to target undeclared dividends payments. HMRC have been looking at company reserves and have noted that some are reducing but no dividends are being declared…

    By Gillian Rushton

    View more
  3. Blog21st Dec 2023

    James Hunt, Gunhild Dam, Lynn Wilson, Lauren McIlroy, Stuart Petrie, Graeme Allan, Paula Fraser, Jill Walker, Gordon Steele, David Purse

    2023 Business Unit Year In Review

    Oxford recently released their word of the year for 2023 and it was “rizz”. If we had to pick a word for our year it would be ‘growth’. You might have heard us talk about our growth journey a time…

    View more
  4. Blog16th Sep 2023

    Michaela McCombie, Business Advisory Services Assistant Manager

    Do you have a legal remuneration strategy?

    Each year it is important for business owners to review the company remuneration strategy to determine the most tax-efficient way to withdraw money from the business. Unfortunately, a number of business owners view the contents of the business bank account…

    By Michaela McCombie

    View more

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