Saffery Maps Exit Options as 2025-26 Tax Changes Hit Succession Plans

Saffery, the accountancy and tax advisory firm, has published guidance on business succession planning that sets out the exit options available to owner-managers alongside the tax changes taking effect in 2025-26.

The advisory lands at a moment when founders and family business owners face a shifting fiscal backdrop. Succession planning — the process of handing over ownership and control of a private company, whether to family members, management, or a third-party buyer — has long been shaped by the UK's reliefs for business assets. The changes scheduled for 2025-26 alter that arithmetic, and Saffery's analysis walks owners through what the new rules mean for each of the main exit routes.

The piece frames the decision as a choice among several distinct structures. An outright sale transfers the business to a buyer and converts the owner's stake into cash. A management buyout hands control to the existing leadership team, often funded with a mix of debt and vendor consideration. A family succession transfers ownership to the next generation. Each route carries different tax consequences, and those consequences are what the 2025-26 changes directly affect.

Saffery's core message to owners is timing. Exit planning is not a transaction that can be executed in the final weeks before a retirement date or a sale process. The tax treatment of a transfer depends on decisions made years in advance — how shares are held, who holds them, whether trusts are used, and when value passes between parties. Where the fiscal rules change mid-course, plans built under the old regime may no longer deliver the intended outcome.

The 2025-26 changes give that point particular force. Owners who assumed established reliefs would apply to their eventual exit now need to test those assumptions against the new rules. Saffery's guidance is designed to support exactly that review: identifying which exit option still works, which structures have become less efficient, and where action taken before the changes bite can preserve an outcome that waiting would forfeit.

For owner-managed businesses and family enterprises, the practical implication is straightforward. Succession decisions deferred indefinitely become succession decisions taken by default, under whatever tax regime happens to apply on the day. Saffery's analysis positions early engagement with the 2025-26 changes as the difference between a planned exit and an accidental one.