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What would selling your business mean for you?
Quick answers to the questions owners ask before they sell or pass on a business, worked out with HMRC’s current rates. Free, with no sign-up, and we don’t keep what you type.
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Choosing how to exit
- Sell to your employees or to a buyer?A bigger price isn't always the better deal. Since 26 November 2025, half your profit on a sale to an employee ownership trust (EOT) is free of tax, but the trust usually pays over years. We compare what you'd keep from each offer, in today's money.Open calculator
- Selling or passing on your business: your optionsThere are many ways out of a company: selling it, handing it to your staff or family, or closing it down. We work out what you keep after tax from each, when the cash arrives, and what your family keeps afterwards, then put them in order by what matters most to you.Open calculator
- Is your business ready to sell?Gives your business a readiness score out of 100 for selling, and a plan for the next 12 to 24 months to raise it.Open calculator
- Selling part of your business to investorsWhen investors buy most of your company, you often take part of the price in cash and the rest as shares in their new company. Tax on the cash is due now; tax on the shares waits until they're sold. We show both, and what your kept shares could be worth after tax when the investors sell (your second bite).Open calculator
- Can your managers or the company buy you out?Shows whether the company or your managers can pay for your shares, how much of the price you'd keep after tax, and the conditions that decide whether a buyback is taxed as a sale or as a much dearer dividend.Open calculator
Selling to an employee ownership trust
- Tax-free bonuses after an employee-ownership saleA company owned by an employee ownership trust (EOT) can pay each person up to £3,600 a year free of income tax, if the bonus is open to everyone and shared on the same terms. National Insurance is still due. We check the rules, share your pot and show the full cost.Open calculator
- Can you sell to your employees?Selling to a trust that owns the company for all its staff can leave half of your profit on the sale untaxed, if nine rules are met. We check each one on your answers and say what to change for any that isn't.Open calculator
- Selling to your employees: can the company afford to pay you?An employee ownership trust (EOT) usually pays you out of the company's future cash. We check whether that cash is enough, and when you'd be fully paid, and test a bad patch too.Open calculator
- What's due after an employee-ownership saleSelling your company to an employee ownership trust (EOT) sets off several filings, each with its own deadline. Tell us the price and the day the sale completed, and we'll list every job, its last day, what it costs and which comes first.Open calculator
- Could your employee-ownership tax relief be taken back?After you sell to an employee ownership trust (EOT), your tax relief only stays if seven rules keep being met. We show how much tax could be taken back and the date you're safe from.Open calculator
- Is your employee-ownership trust run properly?After a sale to an employee ownership trust (EOT), the trust must keep to eight rules, or the tax relief on the sale can be taken back. We check each one on your answers, including the trustee rules for sales from 30 October 2024, and say what to fix.Open calculator
Tax when you sell
- Selling shares or assets: does it matter?Selling the shares is taxed once, on your profit. Selling the company's assets is usually taxed twice: Corporation Tax in the company, then your own tax getting the money out. We show what you keep each way and the extra price that would make an asset sale worth the same.Open calculator
- What an offer paid over time is really worthWhen part of the price comes later, the offer is worth less than the headline: the later money may not all arrive, you wait for it, and some of the tax can be due before you're paid. We work out what it's worth to you on the sale day, after tax.Open calculator
- Will you get the lower tax rate when you sell?When you sell shares in your company, profit up to a £1 million lifetime limit can be taxed at 18% instead of 24%, if every test has been met for the two years before the sale. We check each test, flag spare cash that could put it at risk and show the tax either way.Open calculator
- What to do in the year before you sellPuts the steps for the year before a sale in the right order, shows the tax each one saves or puts off, and lists what to ask HMRC to confirm first. Some steps only work before you agree terms with a buyer.Open calculator
Running the deal
- From offer to completion: your timelineTurns your heads of terms (the short document that sets out the price and the main terms) into a dated timeline to the day the sale finishes, shows which papers the buyer will ask for, and warns you when a date is at risk.Open calculator
- What a sale means for your staffShows what a bonus, share options and leaving pay cost the company, and the tax your staff pay, if you sell your shares, sell the business's assets, or sell to an employee ownership trust (EOT). All three are shown side by side.Open calculator
Family, and after the sale
- Passing the business to your childrenGiving shares away counts as selling them at what they're worth, but for a trading company you can usually put the tax off until they sell. A gift to your husband or wife has no tax now. We show the tax now and later, inheritance tax if you died within 7 years, and any stamp duty.Open calculator
- After you sell: protecting the money from inheritance taxShares in a trading company you've owned for 2 years get business relief from inheritance tax (full relief up to £2.5 million, half above). Cash gets none. We show the bill on the money from your sale, how much of it the sale added, and what gifts, a new business or small-company shares would save.Open calculator
Our calculators give guidance, not advice for your situation. Each one shows how it’s worked out and which official rules it uses. For anything that matters, book a free call and we’ll go through it with you.
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