UK Tax Year End Planning: Personal Cash, Company Funds 

As we get closer to the end of the tax year, most of the focus tends to go on the usual things - pensions, ISAs, allowances and last-minute bits people have been meaning to sort.

All sensible things to look at.

But in reality, the most valuable year end planning conversations are rarely just about ticking off allowances before 5 April.

More often, they’re about stepping back and asking whether your cash, tax position and wider financial setup are actually aligned with what you need next.

Because that’s usually where money gets left behind.

Not in the obvious places - but in cash sitting in the wrong place, money being held too passively, or decisions being made in isolation without looking at the wider picture.

That’s where year end can be genuinely useful.

1. Yes - use the allowances. But don’t stop there.

There are some obvious things still worth checking before 5 April:

• ISA allowance – up to £20,000
• Pension contributions – up to £60,000, subject to criteria
• Annual gifting allowance – £3,000
• VCT allowance – up to £200,000
• Capital Gains Tax annual exemption – £3,000
• Cash savings allowance – £1,000 for basic rate taxpayers / £500 for higher rate taxpayers
• Personal allowance – up to £12,570 of pension income if you’re a non-taxpayer

All worth being aware of.

But where year end planning often falls down is when those things get treated as standalone actions rather than part of a wider financial picture.

A pension contribution might be sensible.
An ISA top-up might be sensible.
A gift might be sensible.

But whether it’s the right thing to do depends on things like:

• what you’ll need access to over the next 6–18 months
• whether funds are sitting personally or in a company
• what tax liabilities are coming down the line
• whether you’re planning to invest, lend, buy or restructure
• and whether using the allowance now actually improves your position, rather than just using it because it’s there

That’s usually the more useful conversation.

Because year-end planning shouldn’t just be about avoiding waste. It should also help you avoid putting money in the wrong place too early.

2. One of the biggest leaks we see? Cash doing very little.

This is the part that often gets missed.

A lot of people spend time trying to save tax at year end while leaving meaningful cash balances parked inefficiently for months at a time.

Usually because it feels safer to leave it alone.

But “safe” and “efficient” aren’t always the same thing.

And right now, there’s a fairly interesting opportunity around shorter-term personal cash that’s worth being aware of.

Recent geopolitical events have pushed UK Government Bond (Gilt) yields up to levels we haven’t seen for some time. That means some gilts can currently be bought at a discount to the price they’ll redeem at.

Why that matters is because for UK taxpayers, capital gains on gilts are generally free from Capital Gains Tax.

So in the right circumstances, the after-tax return can be materially better than simply leaving money on deposit.

A live example

Take the UK Government Bond maturing on 31 January 2028.

At current pricing, it can be bought for around 92.9p and will redeem at £1 at maturity.

That 7.1p uplift is tax-free for UK taxpayers.

The annualised return to maturity is around 4.2%, and because most of that return comes through the tax-free uplift rather than taxed interest, the after-tax return for a higher rate taxpayer would still be around 4.1%.

To generate the same return through a standard savings account, a higher rate taxpayer would need a gross rate of around 6.8%.

That’s a meaningful difference.

So if you’ve got personal cash sitting around for the next 12–24 months, it may be worth asking whether it’s actually sitting in the right place for what you need it to do.

That’s often a much more valuable conversation than simply comparing savings rates.

3. Corporate cash is a different conversation - but no less important

Where cash is held inside a company, the same gilt efficiency generally doesn’t apply in the same way, because returns are usually taxed at corporation tax rates.

But that doesn’t mean company cash should just be left alone.

In fact, this is often where some of the biggest missed opportunities sit.

We regularly see businesses with healthy balances sat in company accounts while also dealing with:

• upcoming tax bills
• uneven cash flow
• development spend
• expansion plans
• debt service
• or simply no clear plan for what that cash is actually there to do

Sometimes that’s deliberate.

Often, it’s just because no one’s had the time or headspace to think about it properly.

Depending on the time horizon and what the cash is for, there are still sensible low-risk options that can be used tactically, including:

• Institutional money market funds
• Treasury Bills
• Short-dated gilts
• High-quality short-dated corporate bonds

The point isn’t to overcomplicate it.

It’s just this:

If you’ve got meaningful cash sat in a business, it’s worth making sure it’s there for a reason - and not just because it’s been left there by default.

That’s often where a short conversation adds more value than people expect.

4. Growth tends to expose weak financial structure quite quickly

This is where year end planning often overlaps with something bigger.

A lot of growing businesses don’t really have a “sales problem” or even a “cash problem” in the way they think they do.

More often, the issue is that the financial structure behind the business hasn’t kept pace with the growth.

That usually shows up in ways like:

• no meaningful cashflow forecasting
• tax being reacted to rather than planned for
• weak visibility over group structure
• poor extraction planning
• payroll, filings or reporting lagging behind reality
• or key financial decisions being made on instinct rather than with a proper view of the numbers

That’s exactly where better financial infrastructure starts to matter.

Not because the business is failing.

But because momentum can hide weak structure for quite a while - until it can’t.

And when that happens, the cost usually shows up in one of three places:

• cash flow pressure
• avoidable tax drag
• or decisions being delayed because the numbers aren’t giving you enough confidence to move

That’s usually where proper advisory work becomes far more valuable than simply “getting the accounts done”.

5. A lot of “cashflow problems” are really structure problems

This is something we see quite a lot.

A business describes the issue as “cashflow”, but when you look more closely, the problem is often that the financial setup hasn’t evolved fast enough for the pace of the business.

That can mean:

• money is moving, but visibility is poor
• working capital is stretched because timing is unmanaged
• funding exists, but isn’t being used strategically
• reporting isn’t strong enough to support better decisions
• or the business has simply become more complex than the finance function behind it

That’s not unusual.

It’s just what happens when growth outpaces financial infrastructure.

And it’s also why year end planning can be useful beyond the obvious tax deadlines.

Because it gives you a reason to step back and ask whether your business is still being run on a financial setup that made sense 12 months ago - or whether it’s quietly outgrown it.

That’s usually a much more important question than whether one allowance has been used before the deadline.

6. The real point of year end planning is to catch what habit has normalised

These things rarely blow up overnight.

They just cost money, flexibility and optionality over time.

And because they happen gradually, they’re very easy to ignore - until you actually need to move quickly and realise the setup behind them isn’t as flexible as you thought.

That’s also part of the reason we’d always rather clients get ahead of year end than try to force everything through at the last minute.

Once you’re into the final stretch, even relatively straightforward planning can become more awkward than it needs to be - whether that’s because providers are busy, paperwork takes longer than expected, or HMRC delays and admin start working against you rather than for you. HMRC’s own recent performance data shows it has been running below target for clearing correspondence within both 15 and 40 working days year-to-date.

The takeaway

If you do one thing before year end, don’t just ask:

“What allowances have I got left?”

Ask:

“Is the way I’m currently holding, extracting and using money still the right setup for what I’m trying to do next?”

That’s usually the more valuable question.

And depending on your position, that might mean:

• using wrappers properly
• repositioning personal cash
• reviewing company-held balances
• tightening extraction strategy
• or simply making sure the business behind the growth is set up properly

If you’d like to sense check any of it - whether that’s year end planning, personal cash or company funds - feel free to get in touch.