The mix of salary, dividends, pension contributions and benefits-in-kind that's right for you depends on your wider income, your company's profit profile, and your long-term goals.

We model the options properly — taking account of corporation tax, dividend tax thresholds, the personal allowance taper and annual allowance rules — so money can be extracted in a structured, tax-aware way aligned with your wider objectives each tax year.

Pensions remain one of the most powerful tools available to a business owner, both for personal wealth building and for reducing corporation tax.

We advise on employer contributions to SIPPs and, where suitable, the use of a Small Self-Administered Scheme (SSAS), which can offer flexibility for some owner-managed businesses, including in relation to commercial property, lend back to the sponsoring company, and offer significant flexibility for owner-managed businesses with longer-term plans.

Important Information

A pension is a long-term investment. The fund value may fluctuate and can go down. Your eventual income may depend upon the size of the fund at retirement, future interest rates and tax legislation. Employer pension schemes are regulated by The Pensions Regulator.

Cash sitting on the balance sheet beyond working capital needs is quietly losing value to inflation.

We work with you to put surplus reserves to work through suitably structured corporate investment portfolios, with careful attention to Business Asset Disposal Relief, Business Relief status, and how investment activity interacts with the company's trading status for tax purposes.

Important Information

The value of investments and any income from them can fall as well as rise. You may not get back the original amount invested.

If a co-director died or became seriously ill tomorrow, what would happen to the shares, the business, and the families involved?

Shareholder protection ensures the surviving owners can buy the departing shareholder's stake without forcing a sale or taking on debt.

Key person cover protects the business itself against the loss of someone whose skills, relationships or revenue are genuinely irreplaceable in the short term.

A Relevant Life Plan provides personal life cover paid for by the company, with the premiums treated as an allowable business expense and the payout sitting outside the estate for inheritance tax.

Executive income protection works similarly for long-term illness — protecting the director's income through the company in a tax-efficient way that personal policies often can't match.

Protection policies only work properly when the legal framework around them is right.

We coordinate with your solicitor so that cross-option agreements can be drafted correctly, aligned with your shareholder agreement, and structured with Business Relief in mind — helping to avoid unintended tax consequences.

Trading businesses can qualify for up to 100% Business Relief from inheritance tax — but the rules are nuanced, and recent reforms have changed the landscape significantly.

We can show you where your business currently stands, how surplus cash and investment assets affect your relief position, and how to plan ahead so your family inherits the value you've built rather than a tax bill.

The years before a sale, succession or wind-down are where the real planning happens. We work with owners well in advance — often three to five years out — to structure pension funding, extract value tax-efficiently, prepare the personal balance sheet for life after the business, and align the exit with your wider wealth, retirement and legacy plans.

Pensions, group life, income protection and financial education for staff are increasingly central to attracting and retaining good people.

We design and review workplace benefits with both the commercial and the human side in mind — meeting your auto-enrolment duties properly while genuinely supporting the financial lives of the team you've built.