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Employers fared badly in Autumn Budget 2024 as the Chancellor looked to them to provide £25bn of the additional £40bn that she needed to raise. The revenue target will be achieved by raising the rate of employers’ National Insurance contributions (NICs) and reducing the secondary threshold so that employers will be required to make contributions at a higher rate on more of their employees’ earnings. 

Sarah Bradford explains the impact of the increases to employers’ National Insurance contributions announced in Autumn Budget 2024 and considers what action might be taken in mitigation.

Broadly, the ‘loans to participators’ regime was devised to discourage executives from taking loans instead of either salary or (even) dividends. Fundamentally, a loan is not earnings (and is not even income), so is not normally subject to income tax (see, for example, Williams v Todd [1988] 60 TC 727, excluding a loan or advance from PAYE earnings income (although the interest-free loan in that tax case was ultimately assessed, relatively modestly, for a ‘taxable cheap loan’ benefit-in-kind).

Lee Sharpe looks at how the scope of the ‘loans to participators’ tax regime can undermine legitimate company reorganisations.

When it comes to tax, attention to detail is all-important. So, retaining documentary evidence to support the reason why something has been done can make all the difference between a tax relief or allowance being allowed or not.

Mark McLaughlin illustrates the importance of expressing intentions or wishes in writing for tax purposes.

Many owner-managers feel that Autumn Budget 2024 was not business-friendly. The media fallout picked up on the apparent ‘ravaging’ changes to the inheritance tax (IHT) regime, focusing in particular on the restrictions in business property relief (BPR) and agricultural property relief (APR). 

Peter Rayney explores the imminent changes to business property relief and how they affect succession planning in owner-managed companies.

A company is a separate legal entity, distinct from the shareholders that own it. Consequently, if the directors and shareholders want to use the profits made by the company for their personal use, they will need to extract those profits first. There are various ways in which this can be done; some are more tax-efficient than others.  

Sarah Bradford considers options for extracting profits from a company in a tax-efficient manner in the 2024/25 tax year.

HMRC recently undertook a ‘One to Many’ letter campaign, wherein HMRC’s skilled data analysts undertake to mine nuggets from a huge range of sources to test for omissions or errors in tax returns. 

Lee Sharpe reports on HMRC getting all ‘Nancy Drew’ with its sleuthing over company reporting and shareholders’ dividend income returns. 

Some company shareholders may either be unaware or have forgotten about a relatively unknown capital gains tax (CGT) relief that offers a reduced CGT rate of only 10% on qualifying gains of up to £10m during their lifetime, if certain conditions are satisfied.  

Mark McLaughlin highlights a relatively unknown and infrequently used but generous capital gains tax relief.

Owner-managers can spend a significant amount of time and energy building a successful and profitable trading company.

Joe Brough looks at tax issues for business taxpayers and their tax advisers when a company is coming to an end.