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This article briefly highlights some tax planning opportunities available to limited companies ahead of their year end to reduce tax liabilities and maximise profit extraction by the effective use of allowances and reliefs.

Joe Brough looks at some tax planning opportunities for companies, with the end of the current financial year looming for corporation tax purposes.

Individual taxpayers often encounter cashflow problems, which makes paying tax by statutory deadlines difficult, if not impossible. 

Mark McLaughlin warns that taxpayers may receive little sympathy from the tax tribunal in late payment penalty appeals if ‘time to pay’ could have been arranged with HMRC. 

In business, not all interactions with customers go as intended. Where legal rights are violated, one may successfully claim damages or other forms of compensation. The question then arises: do I need to account for VAT when receiving such payments? 

Fabian Barth explores the circumstances when businesses need to account for VAT on compensation payments received from customers.

Business asset disposal relief (BADR) reduces the rate of capital gains tax (CGT) payable on a qualifying disposal of business assets. The relief (which was formerly known as entrepreneurs’ relief) is available to individuals and some trustees when they dispose of all or part of their business, their business assets or shares in their personal company.

Sarah Bradford explains the changes to business asset disposal relief and why timing matters.

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.