Income Tax – Planning for Business Succession
Overview:
Unlike people, business can theoretically exist forever, and unlike a plane tickets, businesses are transferable. This seminar targets participants already familiar with the basics of income tax planning and advising clients on business succession planning, allowing businesses to live on under new owners for future generations. Advanced Tax Strategies for Business Succession, designed for experienced tax practitioners, reviews the various stages of a business life cycle with an emphasis on identifying opportunities, techniques, and tax considerations for intra-family estate planning and arm’s length sales of shares. While the seminar focuses on income tax considerations, it also cover selected non-tax issues.
This practical seminar provides the knowledge and tools necessary to identify, plan, and manage business succession considerations for owners and managers of private enterprises through various phases of the business life cycle. In addition, the seminar endows you with a working knowledge of the common tax and non-tax issues involved in formulating and implementing business succession plans. Finally, you will receive a comprehensive set of reference materials.
Course Content:
Some of the key topics covered in the course pertaining to business succession and estate tax planning include the following issues:
- General tax and non-tax considerations related to business succession and estate planning for owner/managers.
- The ‘Wealth Cycle’ of an owner/manager’s private enterprise
- Estate freeze techniques and common corporate tax-deferred rollovers
- Impact of the new “TOSI” and ‘passive income rules’ for private companies on business succession and the use of the small business deduction
- Divisive reorganizations (related party and unrelated party butterflies)
- Arm’s length and non-arm’s length divestiture planning
- Capital gains exemption planning and ‘purification’ techniques
- Post-mortem planning techniques
Learning Objectives:
By enrolling in this seminar, individuals and practitioners can enhance their knowledge of business succession income tax planning through the following outcomes:
- Identify business succession alternatives, including the associated tax and non-tax considerations.
- Understand and implement various estate freezing techniques
- Identify instances of post-mortem double-taxation and available mitigation techniques
- Understand the principles that surround valuation, price adjustment clauses and attribution rules, as those concepts relate to estate freeze transactions and succession planning
- Identify opportunities to involve the use of family trusts, alter-ego trusts and joint-spousal trusts in estate planning
- Apply the capital gains exemption and capital gains deferral rules and identify the related opportunities and tax implications associated to arm’s length sale of private company shares
- Identify potential application of the anti-surplus stripping rules in sections 84.1 and 55(2) of the Income Tax Act
- Implement related-party divisive reorganizations and gain a basic understanding of ‘butterfly’ reorganizations involving unrelated parties
- Identify various issues surrounding the taxation of non-compete payments, life insurance proceeds, financing structures and the use of shareholders agreements in succession planning
Who Will Benefit:
Professionals involved with, or having an interest in, income tax planning for business succession will benefit from this seminar. Specifically, the course will appeal to:
- Public practitioners advising owners and managers of private corporations
- In-house professionals of private enterprises facing succession issues
- Owners or managers seeking to plan the succession of their business