Tax & Accounting News
How Business Owners Can Save On Tax
29/09/2009
High earners facing the prospect of a 50% income tax rate, increased National Insurance Contributions and reduced tax relief on pensions may well be looking around for ways to reduce the impact of those changes now.
For business owners, this is a particularly crucial issue as there are different ways of extracting value from a business, which attract different levels of tax. Within a company, directors have the options of taking dividends, receiving cash bonuses or paying additional pension contributions, while unincorporated businesses owners need to take decisions on whether to withdraw capital from the company, or leave it in.
The forthcoming changes to personal taxation mean capital and corporate taxes are now significantly lower than income tax (see table), and taxpayers need to consider whether alternative methods of receiving income may now be more effective, including bringing forward income, deferring expenditure and restructuring investments to realise capital rather than income.
Effective tax rates
| Individuals and Trusts | Was | Now | Proposed |
| Capital Gains | 40%-10% | 18% | 18% |
| No difference between trade and investment | |||
| Income Tax (highest rate) | 40% | 40% | 50% |
| Companies | Was | Now | Proposed | |
| Retained | 28% | 28% | 28% | |
| Extracted | - Dividend | 46% | 46% | 46% |
| - Bonus | 47.7% | 47.7% | 56.56%/57.19% | |
| - Capital | 43.2%/35.2% | 40.96%/35.2% | 40.96%/35.3% |
(Alternative figures illustrate effect of Employers NI increasing to 13.3% from 2011/12)
With personal tax rates returning to levels not seen since the 1970s, high earners need to begin planning now for how they can minimise the effect of the proposed changes. For more information or advice please contact us.
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