Tax planning before you sell: what female founders need to do 12 months ahead
Published 3 September 2026
If you already know roughly when you would like to sell your business, the next twelve months matter more than almost any other point in the process. This is the window where the decisions you make can genuinely change what you keep after tax, and it is also the window most founders leave until far too late.
I work with a number of female founders and directors in the run up to a sale, and the pattern I see most often is the same. The commercial side of the sale gets careful attention. The personal tax planning gets squeezed in at the end, sometimes after an offer has already been accepted, when the room to make meaningful changes has largely gone.
Why twelve months, specifically
Some of the tax planning available before a business sale depends on conditions being met over time, not just on the day of the sale itself. Business Asset Disposal Relief, for example, can reduce the rate of capital gains tax paid on a qualifying sale, but eligibility depends on factors including how long you have held your shares and your role within the business, so this needs reviewing well before a sale is on the table rather than assumed at the point of signing.
Twelve months gives enough time to review your position properly, make any structural changes that could help, and still have those changes bed in ahead of completion. Leave it any later and your options start to narrow.
Review your shareholding and structure early
How your shares are held, whether solely in your name, jointly with a spouse, or across a family structure, can affect how gains are taxed on sale. Transfers between spouses are generally free of capital gains tax, and for some founders, restructuring ownership ahead of a sale can make a meaningful difference to the tax paid overall. This is detailed territory and depends entirely on your specific shareholding and family circumstances, so it needs proper review rather than a general assumption that it applies to you.
Pension contributions from business profits
This is one of the most overlooked parts of pre-sale planning. Making pension contributions from business profits ahead of a sale can be a tax efficient way to extract value before the business changes hands, rather than only thinking about your pension once the sale proceeds have landed. The rules around how much can be contributed and how this interacts with a business sale are detailed, and getting this wrong can mean missing a valuable window or running into contribution limits you did not anticipate.
Think about what the proceeds need to do for you
It is easy to plan a sale around the headline number and think about what happens afterwards only once the money has landed. In the twelve months before a sale, it is worth starting to think about what the proceeds actually need to achieve. Are they replacing an income. Are they funding a retirement that starts sooner than your current pension planning assumes. Are you planning to support family members or reinvest in another venture.
Answering these questions ahead of time means that once the sale completes, decisions about how to hold and invest the proceeds can be made calmly, rather than under pressure to decide quickly.
Do not leave this until the offer is on the table
By the time a buyer has made an offer, much of the twelve month planning window has already closed. Some structural changes simply cannot be made retrospectively, and rushing tax decisions at the point of sale rarely produces the best outcome.
If you know a sale is somewhere on your horizon, even loosely, this is the point to start the conversation about your personal tax position, not after heads of terms have been signed.
Getting the timing right
Every founder's position is different, and the right plan depends on your shareholding, your family circumstances, your existing pension arrangements, and your timeline for selling. If you are starting to think about an exit within the next year or two and want to understand what you should be doing now to protect what you keep, I would be glad to talk it through with you.
Please note that advice with regard to exit strategy planning may involve the referral to a service that is separate and distinct to those offered by St. James's Place.
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SJP approved 03/09/2026
