Every business owner wants to reduce the tax they pay, but many have not created a plan that minimizes overall personal and corporate taxes for themselves or their families. Nor have they planned for cash flow to pay taxes and ways to reduce the tax owing when the business is sold.
If you haven’t spent the appropriate time considering the following questions, you are not ready to seize opportunities and manage the risks to you and your business.
• Does your business have a growth plan?
• Does it integrate with your personal financial plan?
• When will you sell your business and retire?
• How much will you sell it for and have you planned to minimize your taxes on your annual earnings and on the eventual sale?
Other areas needing attention include: risk management, business operating systems, internal controls, information technology, appropriate financing structure for the business now and for the future, available government programs that benefit the business, business succession planning, personal financial planning, and options/methods to grow the business.
SB Partners created a proprietary program called MORE™ (Managing Opportunities and Reducing Exposure) designed to assist entrepreneurs in creating a plan that encompasses all of the above items.
We spend about half a day interviewing the business owner, usually conducted away from the business to avoid daily distractions. This is an opportunity for the owner to work “on” not “in” the business.
An action plan is then created and deadlines are established. All members of the business owner’s professional advisory team (accountant, lawyer, banker, investment advisor and insurance specialist) are typically involved to ensure that all areas of the plan are considered. Our role is to co-ordinate the execution of the plan and follow up on its timely completion.
If you haven’t taken advantage of all the opportunities or established the optimal structures, then our MORE™ program is perfect for you. Consider this, would you and your family drive to Disneyworld without a map to get there? You could probably do it, but you certainly wouldn’t take the most direct route and would waste a lot of holiday time trying to get there. MORE™ will help you design the map for your business and for you to get where you want to go.
