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We're here with practical tax information for your business. Find out about business taxes, tax planning and more.

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Effective tax planning is essential if you are to minimise your tax bills. Simple tax planning can significantly reduce your tax liabilities.

The self-assessment tax return is an unavoidable burden if you are liable for self-employed tax or have complicated income tax affairs.

Corporation tax is charged on a company's profits. If you trade as a limited company, ensure that paying this tax is as painless as possible.

National Insurance Contributions (NICs) are payable whether you are self-employed or employed by your own company, although different rates apply.

As well as your legal obligations, you’ll want to ensure that payroll is painless and that you use any opportunities to improve your tax-efficiency.

VAT

Effective VAT planning aims to ensure that VAT is relatively painless, and that you are reclaiming as much as possible of the VAT you pay.

Capital gains are made when you sell something for more money than you paid for it. As a result, you can be subject to tax. Take professional advice.

Business property taxes apply to businesses with commercial premises.There are two commercial property taxes: business rates and stamp duty land tax.

If you have tax problems or face a tax investigation, it pays to seek professional advice and you must act rather than just hoping for the best.

Business tax planning

Tax planning advice is an essential part of managing your taxes. Good tax planning advice can help you substantially reduce tax liabilities and defer tax payments. The tax planning advice you need will depend on your particular circumstances and how complicated your financial affairs are.

Tax planning advice providers

Basic tax planning advice should be part of routine accountancy services: for example, if you use an accountant to handle your corporation tax or income tax self-assessment and VAT returns. You should check what expertise your accountants have and what sort of tax planning they are providing as part of these services.

Tax planning advice on other personal tax issues - such as tax-efficient savings or inheritance tax planning - may be offered as an additional service. Alternatively, you might want to take tax planning advice in these areas from a suitably qualified independent financial adviser. Again, you will need to confirm what expertise they have to know whether they can provide the right tax planning advice.

If there are substantial sums of money involved and complex tax issues, you may want to take specialist tax planning advice. This might include tax planning advice from specialists within your existing accountants and from others such as tax lawyers. Bear in mind that specialist tax advisers generally charge substantially higher rates than other advisers.

Using tax planning advice effectively

An initial tax planning advice session should allow you and your advisers to assess the scale of the opportunity. An introductory tax planning advice discussion may well be offered free of charge.

Make sure you understand what tax planning advice will cost and the likely tax savings. If you are using tax planning advice specialists, you’ll also need to sort out how they will work with your existing advisers.

Ideally, you should aim to build a continuing relationship that will provide ongoing tax planning advice. There may be occasions when one-off specialist tax planning advice is required - for example, in connection with corporate finance transactions or selling a business - but even then you’ll want to plan well in advance. Effective tax planning needs to look at your overall tax position and the long-term consequences, so the way your tax planning advice is organised should reflect this.