When you head up a limited company, there will come a time where one of your current shareholders wants to retire from the company. A share buyback is one way to deal with this.
It's possible that your existing shareholders won’t have the funds to buy the shares back from the retiring shareholder. It's also possible that you won't be able to find a third party to buy the shares who's acceptable to your remaining shareholders. However, when a shareholder wants to sever or scale down their interest in the company, it's usually preferable that the company buys the shares back from the outgoing shareholder.
There will be other occasions where a share buyback may be appropriate, but the retirement of a shareholder is the most common scenario – and will be our focus in this overview.
The tax impacts of a share buyback
We’ll be looking at the resulting tax issues from a share buyback, not the administrative procedures to ensure compliance with the associated companies act regulations.
From the company perspective, you’ll need to pay stamp duty of 0.5% of the value of the shares that have been repurchased. It’s worth noting that any costs involved will not be deductible for corporation tax purposes.
For the individual, it’s a bit more complex. The proceeds from the buyback can be subject to either income tax treatment or capital tax treatment.
Qualifying for capital treatment
For many people, a capital tax treatment is the preferable route – with a far lower tax rate of tax to pay once the share buyback transaction has taken place.
To qualify for capital treatment, a number of conditions have to be met:
For income treatment to apply, one or more of the tests for capital treatment have to fail.
Advance clearance can be obtained from HMRC that the capital treatment will apply to the repurchase of the company's own shares. The transaction should be at a market related value, so it’s advisable to get an independent professional valuation.
Talk to us about your share buyback plans
A share buyback avoids the need to either accept a third-party into your company, or to restrict your retiring shareholder from realizing the value of their holding. As such, buybacks can be a very useful mechanism for bringing shares (and therefore control) back into the company.
As your accountant, we’ll advise you on the correct procedures to follow to successfully implement a share buyback transaction. We’ll also help you to obtain the desired tax outcome for the departing shareholder – so they maximize the tax efficiency of the transaction.
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