Tax Planning

It may seem hard to believe but over the last few decades, tax and tax planning have become progressively more straight-forward for most of us. Unless you run a company, there are three main types of tax to consider; income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax. For those who own a company corporation tax will also be a consideration. On top of tax most of us will also pay national insurance contributions up to our state retirement date.

One of the key benefits of working with a professional adviser firm is helping you with tax planning. We will work with your accountant and other professionals to ensure you understand the options that are open to you in order to maximise your savings and don’t pay tax unnecessarily. We believe that we all have a moral duty to pay our fair share of tax and it is not a sensible long-term strategy to make your finances over complicated just for the sake of avoiding tax.

There has been a noticeable change in attitudes towards tax avoidance in the last few years. For many years it was considered every Englishman’s right to avoid paying tax wherever that could be achieved within the boundaries of the law. And many company directors felt it was their duty to shareholders to avoid tax. There have been many complex tax structures created with the aim to reduce the tax payable for those involved and in recent years, HMRC has clamped down on investment structures whose primary motivation is to reduce tax. The current tide is definitely towards sensible tax planning rather than attempting to avoid tax.

Our philosophy with tax planning is to avoid making your life too complicated in order to simply pay less tax. However, there are many simple steps especially with savings that can help you pay less tax over your lifetime.

If you don’t feel comfortable with the idea of saving tax, we would advise you to use the money saved to put towards charitable giving, allowing you to support the causes you feel passionate about and in most cases the tax man will contribute with you.

Listed below is a list of the main taxes payable by UK individuals and companies:

Income Tax Income Tax on Savings and Dividends Capital Gains Tax

Entrepreneur's Relief Inheritance Tax Write a Will Charitable Gifts

Potential Exempt Transfers Corporation Tax National Insurance