OMBs are those that are owned and run by the same people. Whilst all businesses are undoubtedly different there are a number of key things that they should be or could be doing, in terms of tax. We provide our clients with knowledge so that they don’t have to spend time researching the mind field of tax themselves.

We find that this is important to OMB owners as they are very busy people.

A 2011 survey of 1,300 small businesses identified:

• that 59% spent more than a day a week on ‘red tape’ every month
• only 22% thought the amount of ‘red tape’ is about right
• 42% thought the Government should encourage UK business by reducing taxes and ‘red tape’

Often tax efficiencies can be achieved by implementing a fairly minor change, however we are regularly surprised to find that our new clients’ accountants had not advised them. This is often as a result of smaller accounting firms not having the tax expertise in this aspect. We provide this information and give guidance to OMB owners in this respect.

We operate a 4 stage process in respect of tax planning which we feel differentiates us from other tax advisers.

Firstly we sit down and talk to our clients, we establish their goals and aims for the future. This is an important process as we need to discuss not just their tax objectives but their commercial and practical views as well. At this stage or possibly before this (especially where we know the client), we present an initial review which will outline some of the options that could be considered. The initial possibilities are explored in general before we investigate only those that are specific to the client’s needs in detail.

Stage two is often in the form of a detailed report. Many tax planning opportunities do involve an element of introducing something new into the business. This can make things more complicated, so we try and keep things as simple as possible (although we will tell you about more complicated ways of achieving your desired objective). We want to make sure that you fully understand what is involved and aim to provide our explanations in plain English, don’t be alarmed about the size of our report because we hope you will find it easy to read.

It will be necessary for us to prepare numerous calculations to investigate different scenarios, we do include this in the appendices to our report, but only comment on the main costs and benefits in the main report itself.

Our report will also explain the process that would be involved for each of the suggested solutions.

Stage three involves us project managing the agreed change. Our team have experience of numerous tax projects including;

• Incorporation of businesses
• LLP conversions of partnerships
• Advising on tax aspects of selling a business
• Mergers of companies
• Implementation of Enterprise Incentive Schemes
• Setting up Enterprise Management Incentive share option schemes

The last stage, applies to the whole process. This is the support that we offer before, during and after. Tax planning can involve significant changes to a business so we aim to make the process as easy as possible so you don’t have to worry.