Sheards have a wealth of experience in advising businesses and individuals in the Huddersfield area on a range of key tax and financial planning issues. Here we consider strategies to help you to minimise your tax bill, maximise your profitability and boost your wealth.
In times of ongoing uncertainty, proper forward planning remains the best way of ensuring that you are on course to achieve your business and financial goals.
Your business planning strategy
A sound business tax strategy will include such things as:
- making the most of the available incentives, allowances and reliefs
- choosing the most appropriate structure for your business
- claiming tax deductible expenses
- deciding on the best year end date
- minimising your liability to capital gains tax (CGT)
- optimising the roles of family members
- a tax-efficient business exit strategy.
Your personal financial strategy
A good personal tax strategy will focus on helping to ensure that you, your family and your dependents are financially secure in the long term. It will typically include such elements as:
- a tax-efficient remuneration package
- tax-efficient ways to extract profit from your business
- tax-efficient saving and investment strategies
- tax-efficient property investment strategies
- retirement planning strategies
- estate and inheritance tax (IHT) planning
- tax-efficient gifting strategies.
Tax and business measures
Every new tax year sees the introduction of a number of significant changes affecting businesses and individuals, some of which are discussed in more detail later in this guide.
Property tax relief
The government introduced a series of changes to property tax relief. Historically, buy-to-let landlords have been granted relief on interest payments against rental income. However, tax relief for landlords reduced in a series of stages from April 2017. The relief for finance costs on residential properties has been reduced to the basic rate of income tax, over a period of four years. For 2017/18 the deduction from property income will be restricted to 75% of finance costs, with the remaining 25% available as a basic rate tax reduction and may be capped in certain situations.
There have been significant changes to the taxation of dividend income together with the introduction of allowances for savings and dividend income. There is a £2000 nil rate band for dividends still available and £1000 tax free allowance for savings income if you are a basic rate tax payer.
If you're in the Huddersfield area and would like advice on tax planning strategies, please contact Sheards.