Joe Adams

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For years, Business Asset Disposal Relief was one of the most valuable tools available to UK entrepreneurs. Formerly kno...
26/06/2026

For years, Business Asset Disposal Relief was one of the most valuable tools available to UK entrepreneurs. Formerly known as Entrepreneurs' Relief, it allowed business owners to pay a reduced rate of capital gains tax when selling all or part of their business, rewarding the risk and work involved in building something from scratch.

The rate used to be 10% on qualifying gains up to a lifetime limit of £1 million. That meant a business owner selling a company for a £1 million gain would pay £100,000 in tax rather than the standard rate, a saving of up to £140,000 compared to the full 24% rate that applies to most capital gains.

That 10% rate is now gone. In April 2025 it rose to 14%. From April 2026 it has risen again to 18%.

To put that in concrete terms. A £1 million qualifying gain in 2024 produced a tax bill of £100,000. The same gain from April 2026 produces a bill of £180,000. That's £80,000 more in tax on exactly the same sale, purely because the rate changed underneath the business owner.

The relief still exists and still offers a saving compared to the standard 24% rate that higher rate taxpayers face on capital gains. But the gap is narrowing, and for entrepreneurs who built their exit strategy around the original 10% rate, the numbers have changed significantly.

The lifetime limit remains at £1 million of qualifying gains. The two year ownership and employment conditions still apply. But the value of reaching that limit has been reduced with every rate increase.

If you're running a business and thinking about an eventual exit, whether that's a sale, a management buyout, or passing it on, the tax position on that exit has changed materially in the last two years. What you planned around and what the bill will actually be when the time comes may now be two very different figures.

Know your exit tax position before you need it, not after you've agreed a deal.

If you're married or in a civil partnership and one of you earns under £12,570, you could be missing out on free money f...
26/06/2026

If you're married or in a civil partnership and one of you earns under £12,570, you could be missing out on free money from HM Revenue & Customs every single year.

It's called the Marriage Allowance. It lets the lower earner transfer part of their unused personal allowance to their partner, cutting their tax bill. Most couples have no idea it exists, and the ones who do often forget to claim it.

For the 2025-26 tax year, this is worth up to £252. And here's the part that stings: you can backdate the claim up to four years. That means if you've been eligible the whole time and never claimed, you could be owed over £1,000 right now.

It takes ten minutes to sort out and you only have to do it once.

If you're a parent and one of you earns over £60,000, HM Revenue & Customs claws back your entire child benefit payment....
26/06/2026

If you're a parent and one of you earns over £60,000, HM Revenue & Customs claws back your entire child benefit payment. It doesn't matter what the other parent earns. It doesn't matter how many children you have. Once that threshold is crossed, you lose it all.

For the 2025-26 tax year, the high income child benefit charge starts at £60,000 adjusted net income and reaches full withdrawal at £80,000. Most parents don't realise this is happening until they file their tax return.

The trap catches higher earners, freelancers, and business owners off guard. But there are ways to reduce your adjusted net income and reclaim what should be yours.

Most people assume that once a will has been read and the estate distributed, that's it. Whatever the deceased decided s...
26/06/2026

Most people assume that once a will has been read and the estate distributed, that's it. Whatever the deceased decided stays in place. What most people don't know is that beneficiaries have a legal tool available to them for up to two years after a death that can fundamentally change how that inheritance is structured, and in doing so, potentially save tens of thousands of pounds in inheritance tax.

It's called a deed of variation. And it's one of the most underused tools in UK estate planning.

Here's how it works. If you inherit money or assets, you can choose to redirect some or all of that inheritance to someone else, such as your own children or grandchildren, or to a charity, within two years of the date of death. Crucially, HMRC treats the redirected gift as if it came directly from the deceased, not from you. That means the seven year rule doesn't apply. No potentially exempt transfer clock starts. The gift is treated as having been made at the point of death.

The tax implications can be significant. If you're already financially comfortable and your own estate is large, taking on more inheritance simply increases your own future inheritance tax liability. A deed of variation lets you pass it straight to the next generation without triggering that problem.

If at least 10% of the estate is redirected to charity through a deed of variation, the inheritance tax rate on the rest of the estate drops from 40% to 36%, which can save the estate a meaningful amount while also supporting a cause the family cares about.

The deed must be completed within two years of death. All affected beneficiaries must agree and sign. If a minor's share is involved, court approval is required. And if the variation increases the inheritance tax payable, HMRC must be notified within six months.

This isn't a loophole. It's a legal tool that exists specifically to give families flexibility after a death. The two year window is the critical thing to know. Once it closes, it's gone.

Here's something that doesn't get talked about enough. Your workplace pension isn't just a savings account you pay into....
26/06/2026

Here's something that doesn't get talked about enough. Your workplace pension isn't just a savings account you pay into. It's one of the only places in your financial life where someone else is legally required to add money on top of yours.

Under UK auto-enrolment rules, the total minimum pension contribution is 8% of your qualifying earnings. Your employer must contribute at least 3% of that. You contribute the remaining 5%, which includes basic rate tax relief added by the government.

But here's where it gets interesting. Many employers go further than the legal minimum. Some offer to match whatever you put in, up to a certain percentage. Others offer tiered matching, where they contribute more if you do.

The problem is that most employees either don't know what their employer's matching policy actually is, or they're contributing at the default rate without checking whether it's enough to unlock the full match their employer offers.

If your employer matches up to 5% and you're only contributing 3%, you are leaving 2% of your salary on the table every single month. Not losing it to tax. Not spending it on bills. Just handing it back to your employer unused.

Over a working lifetime, that unclaimed match can add up to tens of thousands of pounds in lost pension contributions, before you even factor in investment growth on top.

This is one of the simplest wins available to anyone in employment right now. You don't need to understand financial markets. You don't need a financial adviser. You just need to check your pension scheme details, find out what your employer will match, and make sure your contribution hits that threshold.

If you've never looked into your employer's pension matching policy, that's the one thing worth doing this week. It could be the most valuable fifteen minutes you spend all year.

Everyone panicked that AI was coming for every job.Now the bills have landed, and a lot of companies are quietly undoing...
25/06/2026

Everyone panicked that AI was coming for every job.

Now the bills have landed, and a lot of companies are quietly undoing the damage.

The promise was simple. Fewer people, lower costs, bigger profit. In reality the work didn't disappear. It just changed shape. Someone still has to check the AI, fix the errors, handle the angry customer and catch the detail the machine missed.

A Gartner study of 350 executives at billion-pound-plus companies found the maths simply isn't working. Around 55% of employers who made AI-driven cuts now regret them. Half of the firms that gutted customer service teams are expected to rehire within the year, often under new titles at higher pay.

Even Microsoft, who poured 80 billion dollars into AI, watched its own engineers blow through the entire 2026 AI budget in the first few months.

Here is the lesson for anyone running a small business. You don't need to fear AI and you don't need to worship it either. Use it to do more with the team you have. Let it handle the repetitive work so your people can focus on the things only humans do well. Trust. Judgement. Relationships. The stuff that actually keeps customers coming back.

Cutting people to look efficient on paper is easy. Building a business that runs well is the harder, smarter game.

Save this one. You'll want it when the next shiny tool promises to replace half your team.

For decades, the state pension age in the UK was 65 for men and 60 for women. That changed significantly with the Pensio...
25/06/2026

For decades, the state pension age in the UK was 65 for men and 60 for women. That changed significantly with the Pensions Act 2011 and subsequent legislation, which equalised and then began raising the state pension age for both men and women.

The state pension age reached 66 for both men and women in October 2020. From April 2026, the next phased increase begins, gradually moving the state pension age from 66 to 67. That transition completes in April 2028.

For anyone born between 6 April 1960 and 5 April 1977, this change is directly relevant. Depending on your exact date of birth, your state pension age will be somewhere between 66 and 67, with the precise date determined by when you were born within that window. If you were born after 5 April 1977, your state pension age is already legislated at 67, with a further rise to 68 being reviewed.

The rise to 68 is the next battleground. A government review has previously suggested bringing the increase to 68 forward to between 2037 and 2039, earlier than the previously legislated timetable of 2044 to 2046. That decision has not yet been formally confirmed, but it remains live and would affect millions of people currently in their 40s who have been planning their retirement around a state pension age of 67.

The justification for raising the state pension age has always centred on life expectancy and the rising cost of the triple lock. People are living longer. The state pension bill is growing. Raising the age at which payments begin is the most straightforward lever available to reduce that cost.

The counterargument is that life expectancy increases have not been equal across the population. People in manual occupations, lower income groups, and those in poorer health often cannot work into their late 60s and may never live long enough to recover what they paid in.

If your retirement plan is built around a specific state pension age, checking your exact entitlement date through the government's online tool takes minutes and could significantly affect your planning.

25/06/2026

Most people assume the UK's high energy bills are down to expensive gas. The reality is more complicated and more frustrating.

UK gas prices are actually competitive. In the first half of 2025 they were 28% below the EU average. The problem is electricity, where the UK pays more per unit than almost every country in Europe, sitting behind only Germany and Belgium. UK electricity prices are 32.5% above the EU average and 41.2% above the EU27 median. For industrial users the situation is even more extreme, with UK industrial electricity prices over 125% above the EU median, the highest in Europe.

The core reason is how our electricity market is structured. In the UK, gas fired power stations are frequently the last source of electricity called upon to meet demand, and under the marginal pricing system they set the price for the entire grid. That means even when wind or solar is generating significant amounts of cheap electricity, the price you pay per unit is still largely determined by the cost of gas. Every time global gas prices spike, your electricity bill follows.

On top of that, the UK bundles a significant amount of policy costs directly into electricity bills rather than general taxation. Funding for renewables, grid upgrades, social support schemes like the Warm Home Discount and capacity market payments all add to your unit rate. The UK also has the highest standing charge in Europe at approximately £195 per year, meaning you pay simply to be connected before you use a single unit.

The government announced in April 2026 that it intends to break the link between gas and electricity pricing through long term contracts with low carbon generators. This is a step in the right direction but will take years to feed through to bills.

In the meantime your typical annual bill from July 2026 sits at £1,862, still 53% above where it was in winter 2021/22 and with no return to pre crisis levels forecast.

Save this and follow for weekly content on UK finance, household costs and building real financial freedom.

One of the most common misconceptions about inheritance tax planning is that giving money away solves the problem immedi...
25/06/2026

One of the most common misconceptions about inheritance tax planning is that giving money away solves the problem immediately. Hand over a lump sum to your children today and it's gone from your estate for tax purposes. That's how most people assume it works.

It's not how it works.

Large gifts made during your lifetime are known as potentially exempt transfers. The word potentially is doing a lot of work in that phrase. They are only fully exempt from inheritance tax if you survive for seven full years after making the gift. Die before that window closes and the gift can be pulled back into your estate and taxed alongside everything else.

The good news is that the tax doesn't apply at the full 40% rate for the entire seven years. A system called taper relief reduces the inheritance tax due on the gift depending on how many years have passed since it was made.

Gifts made between three and four years before death are taxed at 32%. Between four and five years, 24%. Between five and six years, 16%. Between six and seven years, 8%. Only after seven full years does the gift become completely exempt.

It's also worth knowing that taper relief only applies to the tax on the gift itself, not to whether the gift uses up your nil rate band. If the gift exceeds the nil rate band threshold of £325,000, taper relief reduces the tax rate on the excess. Below that threshold, the gift simply uses up part of the band with no tax payable regardless.

There are gifts that fall outside the seven year rule entirely. The annual £3,000 exemption. Small gifts of up to £250 per person. Regular gifts out of income. Wedding gifts within set limits. These are immediately exempt with no seven year clock attached.

But for larger transfers, the clock starts the moment you give the money away. And most people don't start the clock early enough.

If inheritance tax planning is part of your thinking, the single most important thing you can do is start gifting earlier rather than later. Seven years passes faster than most people expect.

25/06/2026

Self assessment catches people out every single year and the reason is almost always the same. They either did not know they needed to file, did not know the deadlines, or did not understand the payment on account system. HMRC does not send reminders and does not make exceptions for people who say they did not know.

Here are the deadlines that matter. The 5th of October is the deadline to register for self assessment if you are filing for the first time for the previous tax year. Miss this and you are already behind before you start. The 31st of October is the deadline for paper returns. The 31st of January is the most important date, the deadline for online returns and for paying any tax owed. The 31st of July is the deadline for your second payment on account.

The penalties for missing the January deadline are automatic and immediate. One day late triggers a £100 fine regardless of how much tax you owe or whether you owe anything at all. Three months late adds £10 per day up to a maximum of £900. Six months late adds another 5% of the tax owed or £300, whichever is higher. Twelve months late adds the same again. Interest on unpaid tax runs on top of all of this.

The payment on account system is where first time filers get the biggest shock. Once your tax bill exceeds £1,000, HMRC requires you to make advance payments toward the following year's bill. You pay 50% of this year's bill in January alongside settling this year's tax, then another 50% in July. For someone filing self assessment for the first time with a £3,000 tax bill, January does not cost them £3,000. It costs them £4,500. The extra £1,500 is a payment on account for next year. That is a shock most first timers are completely unprepared for.

Get ahead of it. File early, know what you owe and plan the cash before January arrives.

Save this and follow for weekly content on UK tax, self employment and building real financial freedom.

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