How Mercia’s Year End Tax Planning Guide can help your clients

The run up to the end of the tax year is a golden opportunity for accountants to have a positive impact on their clients’ financial affairs. The approach of 5 April presents a chance to showcase your expertise as clients take stock of their finances. Here we take a look at how Mercia’s Year End Tax Planning Guide can help your clients.

Opportunities and advantages

The run up to the end of the tax year on 5 April 2025 brings a wide range of planning opportunities and is an optimal time to look at taking advantage of available tax reliefs. It is imperative that you share this information with your clients. Our guide will help them check that family and business finances are arranged in the best way possible.

The guide is divided into sections with planning points for companies and business owners as well as for families, couples and individuals.

Each year brings its own tax challenges and this year is no exception. Key areas included in this year’s guide are:

• forthcoming changes to Inheritance Tax (IHT)
• changes to Business Asset Disposal Relief 
• new emphases for profit extraction strategy
• the abolition of the furnished holiday lettings rules
• impact of basis period reform for unincorporated businesses
• increased employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) costs to come.

Practical points

Mercia’s guide explains these changes in simple, easy-to-understand language and suggests practical points for your clients to implement into their yearend tax plan.

It also highlights the role of the accountant, the insight you have into your clients’ finances, and the positive impact your expertise can have on those finances.

Spelling out details

The mainstream media often mentions the increasing cost of employers’ NICs but rarely spells out the details.

Mercia’s Year End Tax Planning Guide sets out the changes to rates and thresholds that will happen on 6 April 2025. It also sets out strategies that businesses can use to mitigate these rises.

In addition, it flags up the importance of clients getting detailed guidance from their accountant on this topic.

Major changes

Similarly, the changes to IHT have made headlines recently, particularly around agriculture and pensions.

These are major changes and highlight the importance of routine IHT planning and the use of reliefs, transfers and lifetime gifts.

Mercia’s guide suggests approaches that will make the best use of all available IHT reliefs and exemptions while reinforcing the need for advice tailored to specific circumstances.

Year End Tax Planning Guide

This is a handy year-end tax planning guide summarising key tax information. It is packed full of content to provide you with the opportunity to communicate with your clients, including a convenient checklist of year end actions to consider.

The guide is available digitally via PDF, which can be branded with your firm’s logo and colours. It can be used digitally as an attachment on an email or as a link on your website.

It also comes in a content-only format delivered in a Word document.

Both versions allow you to tailor the content to include an opinion or personalise with contact details to signpost your availability to clients.

The articles can also be used to boost your social media presence and website traffic via posts and blogs raising the profile of your practice.

Find out more

Mercia’s Year End Tax Planning Guide is packed full of practical advice and proven strategies for your clients to implement ahead of the tax year end.