I JUST HAVE A QUESTION
“I just need to know how this is taxed.”
Sometimes the issue is narrow but technically difficult. We establish the facts, work out the tax treatment and give you a clear answer.
Get the answer before making the decision.
Everything Tax
You don’t need to know what the tax issue is. Clients come to us with transactions, investments, payments, property, companies and decisions — our job is to identify the tax issues, including the ones that are not obvious.
Book a consultationTax is rarely as straightforward as it looks.
Most clients do not arrive thinking about tax legislation. They are buying a property, receiving a payment, taking money from a company, making an investment, moving abroad or trying to get a transaction completed. The tax question often appears secondary — and sometimes nobody involved realises there is one.
That is because tax can look deceptively simple from the outside. A few tax rates, a few familiar reliefs and some apparently straightforward rules.
Behind them sit thousands of pages of legislation, anti-avoidance provisions, relief conditions, Revenue practice, tax treaties and decades of case law. One provision can completely change the tax treatment of an otherwise ordinary transaction.
So you do not need to diagnose the tax problem before speaking to us. Tell us what you are doing, what has happened or what you want to achieve.
We work out where the tax issues are — including the ones you did not know were there.
I’m not sure where this fits — is this something you deal with?
I’M ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING
“What are the tax consequences before I go ahead?”
Before money, assets or ownership change hands, we identify the taxes involved and whether what you are planning could be structured differently.
Understand the tax before you commit.
I HAVE A FEW OPTIONS
“Which route makes the most sense once tax is taken into account?”
Tax can materially change the economics of different options. We compare the alternatives and explain the consequences before you choose one.
Compare the options, not just the tax rates.
SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED
“I need to understand the tax position and what to do next.”
Not every issue arrives in advance. We unravel what has happened, establish the tax position and determine what needs to be done next.
Work out the position before it becomes a bigger problem.
I WANT ANOTHER VIEW
“I’ve already received advice, but I want it independently checked.”
For significant, unusual or technically difficult matters, we independently review the facts, the analysis and the tax position and tell you whether we agree.
Important tax decisions deserve scrutiny.
Some of the questions clients have brought us
If there’s a tax angle, we deal with it.
Not every problem fits neatly into a service category. Sometimes the issue is unusual, highly specific or something you have simply never had to deal with before.
That is exactly the point of specialist tax advice.
Frequently asked questions
There isn’t one extraction method which is always best.
Salary, dividends, pension contributions and capital extraction can have very different tax consequences. Sometimes the better answer is not to extract the money immediately at all, but to consider whether it can be deployed elsewhere within an appropriate corporate structure.
We model the alternatives against what you actually need the money for, your investment plans and what you ultimately intend to do with the business.
Possibly — particularly if your trading company is accumulating substantial surplus cash, you intend to make further investments or acquisitions, or you are considering an eventual sale.
A holding company can allow business owners to separate trading activity from accumulated wealth and, in appropriate circumstances, facilitate reinvestment, acquisitions, disposals and longer-term asset protection.
But a holding company should solve a problem or facilitate a plan. It shouldn’t exist simply because holding companies sound tax-efficient.
Possibly, but this needs to be modelled carefully.
The attraction is obvious. If €500,000 or €750,000 is sitting in your company, extracting that amount personally to buy a holiday home can itself create a substantial personal tax liability.
Having the company make the purchase can therefore appear significantly cheaper.
However, private use of company-owned property can create a taxable benefit. There can also be tax consequences on acquisition, during ownership and when the property is eventually sold or transferred to you.
For an overseas holiday home, the tax rules in the country where the property is situated also need to be considered.
We compare the complete cost of personal and corporate ownership rather than simply looking at the tax saved on day one.
It depends on what you intend to do with the property and ultimately with the money it generates.
Corporate ownership can sometimes reduce the immediate tax cost of retaining profits for reinvestment, but getting money out of the company later creates another question.
We normally compare the full life cycle:
Purchase → rental income → reinvestment → sale → extraction
If you already own properties personally, that does not automatically mean that the next property should be acquired in the same way.
In appropriate structures, company profits can be retained within the corporate environment and deployed for investment without first being distributed personally.
Whether that is appropriate depends on the existing corporate structure, the type of investment, the tax treatment of the resulting investment income and how you eventually intend to access the value.
We also consider whether investment assets should remain inside the trading company or whether separating trading activity and investment wealth would be preferable.
There are structures which can separate economic participation from day-to-day management and control, including appropriately designed corporate and partnership arrangements.
Family partnerships, investment companies and different classes of shares can all be relevant depending on the circumstances.
However, transferring value or future economic interests to children can have gift tax, capital gains tax and stamp duty implications.
Where the principal objective is succession and transferring family wealth, the planning is dealt with more fully through our Private Wealth & Succession service.
The starting point is not a particular tax product or structure.
We look at where your income arises, how you take value from your business, where your investments are held, pension opportunities, company cash, property ownership, family structures and your longer-term plans.
The objective is to identify whether your current structure is producing unnecessary tax costs and whether there are commercially sensible alternatives.
For some individuals, materially.
The answer depends on the nature of your income and gains, where your assets are located, whether you own a business, the regime available in the destination country and whether you genuinely want and are able to live there.
Potential regimes can include Spain’s Beckham regime, Italy’s new-resident flat-tax and 7% pensioner regimes, Cyprus’s non-domicile regime, Greek alternative taxation regimes and Portugal’s IFICI.
We can model the tax difference before you make that decision.
Where relocation becomes a real plan rather than a tax-planning comparison, the detailed implementation falls within our International Tax & Relocation service.
Everything Tax
If it involves tax, talk to us.
If the issue is important, unusual or simply difficult to untangle, we can help you understand the position, identify the risks and work out what to do next.