CASE STUDY:
68-YEAR-OLD FARMER WITH NO SUCCESSOR
JOE, a 68-year-old farmer, formed a company in 2008. The company has accumulated retained profits of €350,000 in the form of cash (€35,000), livestock (€130,000), farm machinery (€75,000) and 12 acres of land which it purchased at a cost of €110,000 and paid for during the period.
For the purpose of this example we will assume that the land will be sold for €130,000 and that the profit earned in the final accounting period which includes the profit earned on the disposal of the stock and machinery is €120,000.
Joe has no successor, has a serious health issue and has little choice but to retire and lease his farm from 2018.
What are his options for extracting the retained profit from his company and what becomes of the company now that it has stopped trading?
The most practical options open to Joe are to voluntarily liquidate the company or simply wind it down to the point that it has no asset value remaining. We will look at what is involved in both scenarios and also look at the cost in terms of the various taxes incurred along the way.
OPTION 1
cial. If he chooses this route Joe will need to appoint a liquidator who will oversee the orderly winding down of the company whereby all assets are disposed of and all debts paid.
Any profit made on the disposal of the livestock and machinery will be subject to Corporation Tax at 12.5pc.
Any gain made on disposing of the 12 acres will be subject to Capital Gains Tax at 33pc.
The gain will be determined by the difference between what the company paid for the land and what it gets when it sells it. Joe can buy back the land from the company but it will have to be bought at current market value.
Following the sale of all the assets and discharging of all debts and taxes, the company will have a pot of cash which will represent the value of Joe’s shares in the company.
As the shares will generally have no base cost their entire value would normally be subject to Capital gains Tax at 33pc but for the availability of Entrepreneur Relief which in this case is more attractive than Retirement relief.
Table A shows a pot of cash present after disposing of the various assets amounting to €458,400 after Corporation Tax, Company Capital Gains Tax and liquidation costs.
Were it not for the availability of Entrepreneur Relief Joe would have a liability to Capital Gains Tax of €151,272 but the availability of the relief will have saved him approximately €105,432 leaving him with a liability of €45,840 which works out at €4,584 per year on an average additional tax.
Overall the amount of tax that he will have paid by forming the company I calculate to be less than half of what he would have paid if had remained as a sole trader.
It is important to note that Entrepreneur Relief is capped at €1m of chargeable gains Shareholders of companies with a value significantly in excess of this limit can expect to encounter a hefty Capital Gains Tax liability in the event that they decide to liquidate the company. If the company has little or no value they have little to worry about.
OPTION 2
Joe might have chosen this option if the company had not been trading for very long prior to liquidation whereby he would not have been entitled to Capital Gains Tax entrepreneur relief or retirement relief.
In this scenario the company disposes of the stock and machinery and effectively ceases trading. The land does not have to be sold and can be retained if preferred and rented out by the company. It should be noted that the company will not qualify for the land lease exemption and will be subject to tax at 25pc on net rents earned.
The company can pay Joe a salary of an amount appropriate to his needs and tax profile thereby running down the cash reserves in the company.
He could also consider the option of investing some of the funds in a company pension (which I will deal with in a future article).
If Joe is happy to confine his total income to the lower tax band (€33,800 single or €67,600 married) he will confine his effective income tax rate and universal social charge cost to 25pc. Alternatively, if Joe and his wife can live on a total annual income of €36,000 or less they will pay no income tax.
In the event that Joe should die while the company still holds cash reserves, the beneficiaries under his will should not incur any liability to tax assuming they liquidate the shares and that their value falls under that beneficiary’s inheritance tax threshold.