Company sales and restructuring
Company sales and restructuring
Company sales
We advise private clients on how they can structure the sale of their businesses in a tax efficient manner. It is important that valuable tax reliefs such as entrepreneur relief and retirement relief are optimised. It is increasingly common that sale consideration will include earn out conditions, deferred payment arrangements, and/or a requirement to investment in the purchaser company. We advise on the tax treatment of these arrangements and on how the upfront tax payment on a sale can be minimised.
Company restructuring
We advise on how to re-organise company structures in tax efficient manner with a view to a sale in the future. We advise on pre-sale planning for a business where it is necessary to reorganise the company structure to separate the trading business into a different company, separate from the investment assets held by the original company.
We also advise on partitions of family companies. This involves a reorganisation of the family company and splitting the business and assets of the company. We agree these arrangements in advance with the Revenue so that tax costs on the reorganisation are minimised.
Retiring shareholder
We advise individual shareholders on how to structure their retirement from a company in a tax efficient manner. This can also involve a transfer of ownership of shares, with the associated value, to the next generation.
Family companies where the shareholders want to facilitate a “changing of the guard” can in some circumstances arrange for retiring shareholders to be bought out. In these cases, retiring shareholders can organise a formal company redemption of shares resulting in a capital gains tax rate of less than 33% for the retiring shareholders with the buyout potentially funded by the company rather than by the other shareholders.