Tax Issues in M&A

• The key issues affecting purchasers, including capital allowances, stamp taxes and tax relief for financing costs
• The key issues affecting vendors, including
  • Business Asset Disposal Relief, with particular emphasis on the changes in FA 2019 and FA 2020
  • the tax treatment of various forms of consideration, such as loan notes or earn-outs
• The key areas where anti-avoidance rules can impact on the tax treatment
  • in particular, where an acquired company has brought forward losses
• The importance of obtaining HMRC clearances
• Other administrative points (e.g. warranties and indemnities)
• (In overview rather than detail) the tax issues affecting employee shares and options.

The trainer is a Chartered Accountant who qualified with PwC in 1988, spending his last 18 months there in the Corporate Tax department.

In 1989 he joined a leading financial training company as a tax tutor, teaching final level candidates for the ICAEW and ACCA examinations. Since 1992, he has been self-employed as a Professional Tutor and Training Consultant, specialising in tax update courses for accountants, lawyers and investment managers.

He has been teaching in the financial services industry since 1994. Although he concentrates on the professional development market these days, he is very experienced in teaching stock brokers, fund managers and financial advisors for their various regulatory examinations.

As a result, he is a tax specialist with (unusually) a very rounded knowledge of financial services products and markets. In 2012 this led to him undertaking Gapfill courses for the CISI.

He is a regular contributor to Taxation magazine and speaks at regional conferences of the ICAEW and CIOT.

There are a huge number of tax issues to consider, across a range of taxes, when dealing with company purchases and disposals. This course will look at transactions from both the purchaser’s and vendor’s perspective and, also, consider both individual and corporate owners.

Emphasis will be given to the unexpected tax charges that can catch the unwary, along with the reliefs available when deals are planned and structured tax-efficiently. Key compliance areas, such as warranties and obtaining HMRC ‘clearance’, will also be discussed.

To aid delegates’ understanding, the course material will include numerous numerical examples.