Taxation

Improve your tax situation

We’re passionate about helping businesses and individuals alike get the most out of their tax situation. We offer tailor-made professional advice that will help you understand your own tax better, and give you the foothold you need to maintain your success, both personally and through your company.

We recommend that you incorporate your tax planning as part of a wider business plan – you’ll see the best results if you align planning with your overarching business objectives.

How we’ve helped: Share schemes

As a drive to incentivise staff, shareholders sometimes want to transfer shares to key staff members. It’s important not to do this without planning, though, as it may result in Income Tax and National
Insurance charges.

The most common way to transfer shares like this is through an Enterprise Management Incentive Scheme (EMI). It’s approved by HMRC and there are numerous tax benefits, including avoiding the Income Tax charge above, and a lower Capital Gains tax rate on any shares the transferee sells. But, like any approved scheme, you have to meet various requirements to use it. What happens if you don’t qualify?

One of our clients recently faced this set of circumstances. But, we were able to advise on a similar scheme – the Employee Shareholder Scheme (ESS). The ESS is essentially an HMRC pre-approved plan and comes with significant tax breaks which can outweigh the benefits of an EMI plan. For example, the first £100,000 received on the sale of the transferee’s shares can be tax-free.