andy & jayne

We have our visas and we are meant to be in Australia by 16th March, 2006 - Hooray ! But the private buyers for our business have just pulled out and now we have to put it on the market! Really bloody annoyed!

Anyway, looking into selling the business and realise that we do have to pay capital gains tax on the profit from selling the business - Is there anyway we can get out of paying the bloody thing if we are moving to Australia??

Thank you in advance!!

Jayne

walaj

it is a business asset, thus liable to CGT. You should really speak to an accountant (and pay for the advice) as they will be better placed (than anyone here) to advise and do their best to minimise the amount that is taxable.

Alex Hall

I presume you are already aware of sum of this.. however

Can't be sure, but as my dad recently sold his business here are a couple of points.. Also worth checking if I have got this all right... Having one of those days!

CGT on the business is tapered, i.e. the longer you have owned the business the less CGT you will pay.

for example http://www.moneyworld.co.uk/dictiona...gt-004051.html shows the tapering..

i.e. if you have owned the business for two or more years you only pay CGT on 25% of the gain in value rather than 100%, and then this will probably be at the top tax rate.. i.e. you pay 40% of 25% of the gain, i.e. 10% of the gain would be your tax bill.

Also, if you sell the business after you leave the UK you may find there are options there, although you probably want to sell before you arrive in Oz. Hence an option would be to find a country that has a low tax rate (perhaps Singapore???), fly there, register for tax, sell business, pay the tax, then fly to Oz.

I'm not sure if the above will work, however I have heard of people doing similar things with CGT on personal investments etc when going to Oz. The fact that the UK tax for businesses is Tapered though may not make this so viable.

Probably worth getting professional advice though

hth

Alex

yonk

Do take advice....

Assets are rebased on going to Oz so if you sell straight after then you should not have a capital gain. However, if you return to the UK within 5 years, you will be subject to UK CGT.

That's my limited understanding after reading an expat tax book & Alan Collett sent us some factsheets when we were thinking of Oz and so I would have a look at his website, maybe.

www.collettandco.com/factsheet.cfm