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Where you run your business through a company, you will need to extract profits if you want to use them personally. There are various ways of doing this. 

A conventional and tax-efficient strategy is to take a small salary and to extract further profits as dividends.

Sarah Bradford explores tax-efficient options for company owners to extract profits.

When an unincorporated business is transferred to a company upon incorporation, this results in a cessation by the business owner (i.e., the sole trader, or partnership). 

Mark McLaughlin outlines a lesser-known tax relief when an unincorporated business is transferred to a limited company upon incorporation.

It is often said that VAT is a tax where substance matters more than form, and where the true economic reality is determinative, rather than the precise wording which might be employed in the underlying contracts.  

Fabian Barth explores the importance of contracts in identifying the supplier and recipient in a VAT supply.

The Autumn Budget 2025 introduced various income tax increases, most of which apply from April 2026. 
Many business owner-managers are now using trusts to implement succession planning and it is therefore important for them to understand the current income tax position of discretionary trusts and the extent to which the tax rises have affected their ‘family’ trusts.

Peter Rayney reviews the current income tax regime for discretionary trusts.

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.