tax planning

Tax is a factor in the affairs of all our barrister clients and is an integral part of our approach to wealth planning.

You will benefit from our annual personal tax compliance service. But that is just the start. Our specialists provide an expert tax planning service. And if you are subject to a tax enquiry, we will be there to fight your cause with skill and experience.

Tax planning

Compliance

Our annual personal tax compliance service (including the completion and submission of your self assessment tax return) is included within our On Your Feet, Silk Lite and Silk packages.  We like to prepare your accounts and tax returns promptly so that we can advise you what your tax position is and you can plan for your January and July tax payments. We aim to avoid surprises! We’ll also advise you on VAT and if you take the Silk package we’ll complete your VAT returns for you.

Tax planning

The complexity of tax law now requires highly specialist tax planning to enable our barrister clients legally to minimise their exposure to all taxes. The tax advice we give is always tailored to our clients' individual circumstances. A "one size fits all" approach does not work! We’ll agree with you at the outset how innovative you would like to be in your approach to tax planning.

We’ll conduct a personal review to identify how we can help you to reduce your personal income tax or capital gains tax. This will include consideration of tax-efficient investments (including pensions, venture capital trusts, the enterprise investment scheme, film partnerships, and enterprise zone property trusts – all in conjunction with our wealth planning team) or other reliefs that may be available.

We’ll also look at estate and inheritance tax planning, including advising on the structure and content of wills and trusts and investments that work well for inheritance tax.

Tax enquiries

Barristers have, in recent years, been identified by HMRC as candidates for tax enquiries. A tax enquiry can be stressful so we try to ease the strain for you in our dealings with the tax authorities. Of course you remain responsible for your own tax affairs, but we can handle the conduct of the enquiry and help protect your rights as well as advise you of your responsibilities.

We recommend that our clients take advantage of the Cassons Tax Investigation Service which is an insurance-backed scheme to reimburse the accountancy fees incurred if you are subject to a tax enquiry. (It does not however cover the amount of any tax liability.)

Whatever the nature of the tax enquiry it is important that you are well advised. You cannot, unfortunately, rely on the tax authorities necessarily to establish the "correct" amount of tax that you may owe. Some points are not clear-cut and are open to interpretation – you need to have your affairs negotiated and presented for you in the most favourable light.