Tax Planning Accountants in London
Most people only think about tax once a year, when a return is due. By then, the year that actually determined the bill is already over — the allowances that went unused, the income that landed in the wrong tax year, none of it can be undone retrospectively.
Tax planning is the opposite approach: a thorough review of your current financial position, carried out while there's still time to act on it, so the decisions that reduce your tax bill are made before the year ends, not discovered afterwards.
The Finance Equation Ltd is an award-winning, ACCA-regulated firm of chartered certified accountants with over 30 years' experience, providing tax planning services to individuals, families and businesses across London — identifying every relief and allowance you're legally entitled to, and building a plan around using them. It's one part of our wider taxation services.
Every allowance has a cut-off — we make sure yours are used, not lost.
Why Tax Planning Has To Happen Before the Decision, Not After
A tax return records what already happened. Tax planning is different: it looks at your income, your investments, your business and your plans, and works out the most tax-efficient way to structure what comes next.
Every one of those decisions has a deadline attached to it, usually the end of the tax year, and once it passes the opportunity to act on it passes too. We calculate your current tax position accurately, then advise on the legal methods available to reduce what you owe going forward — reviewing family and business arrangements, exploring income-shifting between spouses or business partners where it's beneficial, and making sure every allowance and relief you're entitled to is actually being claimed, not just theoretically available.
Personal Tax Planning: Using the Allowances You're Entitled To
Every individual has a set of annual, tax-free allowances that reset each year and cannot be carried forward once lost.
Earned before Income Tax applies at all — though it starts shrinking once income passes £100,000, disappearing completely at £125,140.
Running up to £50,270 of income.
40% above £50,270, 45% above £125,140.
Timing income around the Personal Allowance taper alone can make a material difference to what you actually keep.
Sheltered per year in an ISA, growing free of Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax.
Contributed with tax relief — tapered down once threshold income passes £200,000 and adjusted income passes £260,000.
Of gains sheltered each tax year — worth planning the timing of a second property or share disposal around.
Miss any of these allowances in a given tax year, and in most cases it's simply gone. Pairing gains with losses in the same tax year matters more than ever now that the Capital Gains Tax exempt amount is a fraction of what it once was.
Estate and Inheritance Tax Planning
Inheritance Tax is charged at 40% on an estate above the available thresholds, and those thresholds are narrower than most people assume.
Nil-Rate Band
£325,000The standard threshold below which no Inheritance Tax is due, frozen at this level for several years running.
Residence Nil-Rate Band
£175,000Available when a qualifying home passes to direct descendants, on top of the standard threshold.
Both thresholds are frozen while property and investment values have continued to rise around them. For a couple, careful use of both allowances, and of gifting and trust planning during their lifetimes, can be the difference between a straightforward transfer and a large, unplanned tax bill on the estate.
Structured around your circumstances and your goals — not a once-a-year compliance exercise.
Business Tax Planning
For business owners, tax planning starts with reviewing the structure itself — sole trader against limited company, how profits are drawn, and how the business finances the equipment and property it needs.
Annual Investment Allowance
£1,000,000The full cost of most qualifying plant and machinery, up to this amount a year, deducted directly from profits before tax via the Annual Investment Allowance — planned around the timing of the purchase and the accounting period it falls into.
R&D Tax Relief
Where a business is genuinely working on new products, processes or technology, Research and Development tax relief is another allowance too often left unclaimed simply because directors don't realise their work qualifies.
Alongside pension planning for directors and shareholders, these are exactly the reliefs a proactive tax planning review is built to identify before the year closes, not after.
SSAS Pension Planning for Directors and Business Owners
For directors and family businesses, pension planning can go further than a personal contribution.
A Small Self-Administered Scheme (SSAS) is an occupational pension scheme available for up to 12 members, often used by sole traders, directors and family businesses, in which members keep control over how the fund is invested, subject to certain statutory restrictions on the assets it can hold.
Two features make a SSAS particularly useful for a business owner. Under HMRC's rules on loans to sponsoring employers, a SSAS can lend up to 50% of the value of its assets back to the sponsoring business, secured as a first charge and repaid over a maximum of five years at a prescribed minimum interest rate — a way of putting pension funds to work as working or growth capital, on terms fixed in advance rather than negotiated with a bank.
A SSAS can also hold commercial property directly — including a business's own premises — without the tax charges that apply to residential property held in a pension scheme, provided the business pays the scheme a full commercial rent. Bought correctly, that means the rent a business already pays for its premises builds the director's pension instead of a landlord's, while the property itself sits outside the estate for Inheritance Tax purposes.
What makes it different
We advise on whether a SSAS fits your circumstances, and manage the scheme's investment rules alongside the wider tax plan so neither works against the other — the same joined-up thinking behind our Fractional AI CFO service.
What Our Tax Planning Service Covers
Every engagement starts with the same thorough review of your position, then builds a plan around it.
Calculation of your current tax position
Across income, gains, dividends and, where relevant, your business.
Review of family and business arrangements
Including income-shifting between spouses or partners where it reduces the overall tax bill.
Full use of available allowances
Personal Allowance, ISA, pension annual allowance, and the Capital Gains Tax exempt amount, planned around the tax year rather than discovered after it ends.
Business structure and incorporation advice
Sole trader versus limited company, and property income planning for higher-rate taxpayers.
Retirement and pension planning
Including director and shareholder pension strategies and SSAS structuring.
Capital allowances and R&D relief reviews
Identifying deductions and credits available but not yet claimed.
Accurate, organised record-keeping
So every claim is properly evidenced and submissions to HMRC are timely and complete.
Why Individuals and Businesses Choose Finance Equation
We're an award-winning, ACCA-regulated practice with more than 30 years advising individuals, families and business owners across London on tax-efficient planning — not a once-a-year compliance service, but an ongoing relationship built around your circumstances and your goals.
Because we're chartered certified accountants first, every recommendation is grounded in your actual position, not a generic checklist, and reviewed regularly as your income, your business and the rules around you all change.