ASWATAX's specialist holding company practice.

Holding Company by ASWATAX is a specialist service of ASWATAX LTD, a UK tax advisory firm registered in England and Wales. Advice is led personally by Omar Aswat, a Chartered Tax Adviser (CTA), with a Big 4-trained team of ICAEW and ACCA Chartered Accountants and an in-house legal team. The service exists to give owner-managers a team that concentrates on holding companies and group structures, from the first share exchange to an eventual sale or succession.

It's part of ASWATAX. The main practice advises owner-managed businesses and their owners on a wide range of tax matters, and Holding Company by ASWATAX is the part that focuses on holding companies and groups. You get a specialist team for your structure, with the wider firm behind it when your affairs also involve property, a business sale or a demerger.

Our team has more than 15 years' experience and has set up 100+ holding companies. We've worked on more than £250m of businesses restructured, in groups up to £50m, and we've obtained 100% of the HMRC clearances we've applied for, across 50+ applications. That covers single companies taking their first step into a group as well as established groups being reorganised or prepared for sale.

Profitable UK trading companies run by their owners, often making £250k or more a year or worth between £1m and £50m. Many are family businesses or companies with a small number of founding shareholders. The structure questions are much the same whatever the business does: where cash should sit, where property belongs, and how the owners will eventually sell or pass the business on.

Not as our main service. Holding Company by ASWATAX focuses on advice and structuring: the decisions that change how a group is taxed for years to come. Most clients keep their existing accountant for annual accounts, corporation tax returns and payroll, and we work alongside them. When a structure changes, we explain what that means for the annual compliance so nothing is missed.

Holding company work involves several taxes at once and rules that rarely come up in day-to-day practice: share exchange relief and its new main purpose test, clearance applications, stamp duty relief, group rules, and the trading tests for sale and succession reliefs. Many accountants handle annual work very well and bring in a specialist for these one-off, hard-to-reverse decisions.

Advice is led by Omar Aswat, a Chartered Tax Adviser (CTA), the senior professional qualification of the Chartered Institute of Taxation. The wider team is Big 4-trained and includes Chartered Accountants qualified with the ICAEW and the ACCA. That combination matters for group work, which needs both technical tax knowledge and a clear grasp of accounts, reserves and valuations.

Yes, and we prefer to. A restructure needs legal documents, such as share exchange agreements, board minutes and resolutions, and often changes to the articles or a shareholders' agreement. We design the tax side, agree the order of steps with your solicitor and review the documents against the plan. If you don't have a corporate solicitor, we can suggest how to find one.

ASWATAX runs a small number of specialist services. Demerger Tax (demergertax.co.uk) covers splitting companies and groups. Transaction Tax Partners (transactiontaxpartners.co.uk) advises on buying and selling businesses. Property Tax Advisory (propertytaxadvisory.co.uk) works with landlords and property companies. Our main practice is at www.aswatax.co.uk. Each focuses on one kind of work, with the same firm behind it.

Our registered office is at 124 City Road, London EC1V 2NX. We advise owner-managed companies and groups across the UK. Most of our work happens by video call, phone and email, which fits around running a business and around your accountant's and solicitor's timetables. If a face-to-face meeting would help at a key stage, such as a shareholder meeting, ask us.

Holding Company by ASWATAX is a service of ASWATAX LTD, a limited company registered in England and Wales. ASWATAX LTD is registered with the Chartered Institute of Taxation as Chartered Tax Advisers and for the purposes of anti-money laundering legislation. As the money laundering rules require, we'll ask for identity documents for the company and its owners before we start work.

We respond the same working day. Restructures often have a date behind them, such as a year end, an investment round or a buyer's timetable. Tell us the date that matters when you get in touch and we'll plan around it, from the first call through clearance and implementation to the final filings.

No honest adviser can promise that before looking at the facts. A holding company often helps, but sometimes it adds cost and complexity for little benefit, or the timing is wrong. Our job is to show you what each option means in practice, including the costs of running a group, and to recommend what fits your plans, even if that's leaving things as they are.

It means a Chartered Tax Adviser is responsible for the advice you receive: the analysis, the recommendation and the clearance applications. Omar Aswat CTA leads every holding company engagement personally. The wider team helps with information gathering, modelling and drafting, but the tax judgement on your structure comes from him. You deal with the same adviser from the first call to the final step, rather than being handed between departments.

Yes. Holding company decisions affect shareholders personally, through how they're taxed on dividends, on a sale and on death. We advise owners and their families on those personal consequences as part of the work, and can work with their wealth manager or financial planner. Where shareholders' interests differ, we'll say when separate advice would be sensible.

Because the decisions involved are some of the most valuable, and least reversible, that a company owner makes. Getting the structure right early can protect cash, make room for new ventures, and keep sale and succession reliefs available. Getting it wrong can be expensive to unwind. Concentrating on this work means we see the same issues often and know where the traps are.