Tax: Why "My Accountant Handles That" Isn't the Full Answer

It's tempting to lump tax in with finance and assume your accountant has it covered. In a sale process, that assumption can cost you.

Tax due diligence isn't about whether your annual return was filed on time. It's about deal-specific questions: your full compliance history across every tax head, whether there have been HMRC enquiries, how R&D claims are evidenced, what the tax implications are of the deal structure itself (share sale versus asset sale), and whether any past restructuring or share issues carry tax consequences that follow the business into new ownership.

These are specialist, transaction-shaped questions. Your accountant may well be able to answer them, but they need asking well in advance, not discovered mid-process when a buyer's tax adviser starts probing.

In our own sale, tax questions arrived from two directions at once: the buyer's tax specialist and our own adviser, often asking the same thing in slightly different language, which got repetitive fast. Having one clear, agreed record of our tax position, rather than reconstructing it twice, saved a genuinely significant amount of time and back-and-forth.

The size of this work is smaller than it sounds, provided you start the conversation with your accountant early and specifically: "if we were selling in the next year, what would a buyer's tax adviser want to see?" That single question does most of the heavy lifting.

If this has you wondering how ready your own business is, the free readiness assessment will show you where to look first, in about three minutes.