For Business Owners
Financial Planning for Business Owners
When you are full of ideas for starting a new business, all you can see is what will happen tomorrow. The thought of having their vision turned into reality often blinds new entrepreneurs to that all-important question: Does it all makes sense financially?
While passion is key to turning vision into a functional business, prudent financial planning is critical to ensure that reality comes to fruition and continues to survive and thrive!
Why Financial Planning Is Important For Business Owners
Just as even the savviest pilots can’t always fly blind, so is the case with business owners. Meticulous financial planning is vital if a business is to succeed in the short-term, intermediate, and long-term.
Without sound financial planning, even the best business ideas will soon falter. Business financial planning is the lifeblood for any venture to succeed, expand and flourish in the long run.
What Can We Do For You?
Here’s how our Business Financial Planning solutions can help you:
- Business plans: To ensure the ongoing viability of your business, you’ll need help putting together a sound business plan – for the short, intermediate, and long term.
- Contingency planning: Emergencies and unforeseen situations can arise at anytime during the business’s life. It takes savvy financial advice to ensure you have the financial buffer to weather the business events successfully
- Taxation: Most jurisdictions offer several tax incentives to business owners to create, expand and continue operating in those jurisdictions. Unfortunately, many business owners are either unfamiliar with the tax-friendly nature of such incentives; or underutilize them to the detriment of their businesses. Leave it to our professionals to help you understand such incentives so you can apply them to mitigate your business taxes
- Debt management: Is it best to borrow against business assets? Or should you consider refinancing? Or would it make sense to dispose of some assets to finance debt? These are everyday decisions that we help business owners make
- Succession planning: What happens if something untoward happens to you? What if you wanted to step down or take a less active role in the business? Is there someone groomed and primed to assume the mantle of leadership and succession?
- Retirement, Estate, and Legacy Planning: When it’s time for you to call it quits, our goal is to ensure you can enjoy the fruits of your hard work. Through careful planning, we’ll not only make sure you enjoy a comfortable retirement but that your legacy passes seamlessly to your next generation of successors
Tax Planning for Business Owners
Business transactions are becoming more complex each year. And with that, the world of taxation grows in complexity as well. As the rules of doing business within a single jurisdiction or across multiple jurisdictions change, so does the need for assessing their tax impacts on specific transactions. As a business owner, you have other critical things to worry about – like running your business. Why not trust professionals with the tax planning aspects of your business while you focus on the rest?
Why Tax Planning Is Important For Business Owners
As a business owner, it’s hard for you to be an expert in all matters - Finance, Human Resources, Marketing, Accounting, Sales, Shipping, and Procurement – and that’s why you hire the best talent to staff those roles. But many of those disparate functions have one thing in common: They have some form of tax element to them.
Business taxes can sometimes be a barrier to the growth and profitability of your business. However, if planned correctly, the tax codes offer several promising opportunities that business owners can leverage. Without savvy tax planning, you could be losing thousands of dollars a year in unclaimed rebates, benefits, charge-backs, and deductions,
Whether it’s Income Tax, Employment Taxes, Estimated Taxes, Self-Employment taxes, Excise taxes, Provincial Sales Taxes, or Goods and Services Taxes – the legislative environment for each is too complex for any single individual to master and navigate. So, when it comes to assessing and planning your business taxes, you need an experienced team of Tax Planning professionals to guide you.
What Can We Do For You?
The objective of our Tax Planning service isn’t about avoiding taxes but focused on the most compelling interpretation and application of tax laws and statutes to defer, eliminate or reduce business taxes for our clients.
Our Tax Planning specialists provide advice and services to various business entities, including Sole Proprietorships, Partnerships, Limited Liability Companies (LLPs), Business Corporations/Incorporated Companies, Cooperative structures, and Not-for-profit entities.
More specifically, we provide advice and services that include, but are not limited to:
- Reviewing and advising clients on the long-term impact to their business, of tax legislation and proposed amendments
- Strategic tax planning advice to help you manage your effective tax rate
- Planning and advice on Alternate Minimum Tax, including supporting you on all paperwork and other formalities to determine amounts owing – if any
- Providing advice on the most effective tax structures for a specific type of business
- Considerations on the most effective ways to minimize your tax burden
- Tax planning strategies and advice around Succession and Estate planning to ensure that your exit from the company doesn’t trigger massive tax liabilities or that your beneficiaries aren’t saddled with undue tax burdens from their inheritance from the disposal of business assets
Succession Planning for Business Owners
When entrepreneurs start a business, succession planning is the last thing on their minds. Most business owners spend much time – as they should – on Operations Plans, Marketing Plans, Capital-spending Plans, Maintenance Planning, Staffing Plans…and more. But what about Succession Planning? Wouldn’t you like an orderly “exit” from the business once it’s time for you to take a back seat?
Why Business Succession Planning Is Important
You’ve built your business through sweat, toil, and tireless effort. Most entrepreneurs' business operations represent a legacy they want to leave to the next generation. And what would happen to the business if you are suddenly incapacitated – is there someone reliable who can step into your shoes? Have you thought about the customers/clients that depend on the goods/services your company provides – who would serve their needs if you were not around?
More importantly, given that many loyal employees count on working for the business long after the owner has passed, it makes sense to ensure someone with the proper vision for the business succeeds you.
Without a proper succession plan in place, family strife and internal (company) politics would threaten the firm's future as a going concern. Companies without sound succession plans are sometimes pushed into bankruptcy or receivership.
There are far-reaching repercussions of not having a well-thought-out succession plan. Unfortunately, they are not too pleasant for the business, the business owner, their beneficiaries, and the employees working for the company!
What Can We Do For You?
Simply put, our Business Succession Planning service provides business owners peace of mind – the kind that comes from knowing you are well-prepared to relinquish business control on your terms. And we do that by ensuring that the business’s stewardship passes into hands designated and approved by you - the business owner.
But succession planning is not just about designating a particular individual or group to step in after you’re gone. Our Business Succession Planning team lays out a comprehensive process for identifying, screening, grooming, and ultimately transitioning ownership to your designated successor/s when the time comes.
Here’s a preview of what our Business Succession Planning service covers:
- Strategizing succession: Helping you identify the ideal succession strategy based upon any “end game” objectives that you have in mind: Maximize sales proceeds. Minimize tax implications. Create a lasting legacy. Assure a comfortable retirement.
- Building succession plans: We’ll consult with you about possible succession strategies: Pass the business on to your next generation. Hand it over to designated/trusted employees. Have professional management teams from outside step in and take over. Sell the business to a competitor and pass the proceeds to your heirs. Go public, leaving it up to the Board of Directors to deal with the company’s future.
- Understanding the impacts: Together, our Succession Planning experts will walk you through the legal, financial, and tax implications for each of the various succession scenarios proposed. This impact analysis will help you determine which of the succession approaches makes the best sense for you and the business
- Identifying successors: Depending upon which strategy you choose, we’ll work with you to identify a list of skills and qualities needed in your successor. This phase of our Succession Planning often results in recommendations for training or mentorship well in advance of your exiting the company
- Multi-disciplined advice: If the plan involves selling all or part of the business, our experts will work with a team of advisors, including Financial experts, Accountants, Insurance Agents, Realtors, and Estate Planners, to determine a fair and equitable valuation for the business
- Relationship-building: Finally, we’ll work with you to establish a comprehensive timeline for critical milestones within the plan. And because our service is based on a long-term relationship, we’ll continually monitor and consult with you as your succession objectives evolve or change
