Insights

Owner-managers of UK trading companies, their families, and the accountants, solicitors and corporate finance advisers who work with them. Each article takes one practical question, such as what changes when a holding company is inserted or how a sale through a group works, and explains the tax in plain English. They assume you know your business well but not the tax rules.

The articles are written by our team and reviewed by Omar Aswat, a Chartered Tax Adviser (CTA), before they're published. They draw on the legislation, HMRC's published manuals and our experience of setting up and restructuring holding companies. Every article shows the date it was last reviewed so you can judge how current it is.

We add articles as questions come up in our work and as the rules change, rather than to a fixed timetable. Changes such as the Finance Act 2026 reforms to share exchanges and to Business Relief are covered when they happen. Existing articles are reviewed and updated too, and the review date at the top of each one shows when that last happened.

Use the articles to understand the issues and prepare better questions, not as advice for your situation. Each one explains how the rules generally work, but the right answer for your company depends on its history, its shareholders and your plans. Before you issue shares, move assets, pay a large dividend or agree a sale, take advice on your own facts.

Into four topic hubs that follow the life of a company: setting up a holding company, running a group, selling and exits, and succession and family. Each hub has a short introduction, links to the main service pages on that subject and answers to the common questions. Within each hub, articles are listed with the newest first.

A service page, such as the one on the substantial shareholding exemption, gives the full picture of a subject and explains how we help. An insights article usually goes deeper into one narrower question, a recent change in the rules, or a common mistake. The two link to each other, so you can move from a quick read to the broader explanation and back.

Yes. Articles are written for the current tax year, 2026/27, and reviewed when Budgets, Finance Acts or HMRC guidance change something relevant. Where a change has a start date, such as the main purpose test for share exchanges issued on or after 26 November 2025, we say which transactions it affects. Older rules are only described where they still matter for past transactions.

Yes, please do. Many of our articles start with a question a client, accountant or solicitor has asked us. Email taxadvisory@aswatax.co.uk with the question you'd like answered. We can't promise to cover every suggestion, and we won't write about a specific client's affairs, but questions that come up often are the ones we most want to answer well.

You're welcome to share links to our articles with clients and colleagues. If you'd like to quote from one, keep the quote short, credit Holding Company by ASWATAX and link to the original, so readers can see the date and any later updates. Please don't republish full articles elsewhere, because they may change as the rules do.

Because group structures are easier to follow as pictures. A diagram shows who owns what before and after a change, which way cash or dividends flow, and where a relief applies. On this site the colours are fixed, so a holding company is always blue, a trading company green, an investment company amber and a property company brick, wherever you see it.

They cover how property and demergers fit into a holding company group. For deeper reading on property companies and property tax, see our sister site Property Tax Advisory (propertytaxadvisory.co.uk), and for splitting companies and groups, Demerger Tax (demergertax.co.uk). Transaction Tax Partners (transactiontaxpartners.co.uk) covers selling a business in more depth. The same firm is behind each.

Where numbers help, yes. Examples use simple, round figures and the 2026/27 rates and allowances, to show how a rule works rather than to predict any real company's tax. Names and businesses in examples are illustrative, not real clients. For your own figures, the tools on this site let you try the numbers, and a call lets us check them properly.

Look at the review date at the top of the article and the tax year it refers to. We review articles when the rules change, and update the date when we do. If an article refers to a rate, threshold or relief that you think has changed since, check the relevant service page, which is reviewed on the same basis, or ask us.

Yes. Use the sign-up box in the footer of any page, or tick the box on the Book a call form, to receive occasional emails with holding company and group tax insights. You can unsubscribe at any time. If you're a client, we'll also tell you directly about any change that affects work we're doing for you, so you don't need to rely on emails for that.

Both, and we say which is which. Where HMRC has published guidance, such as its view on what counts as substantial non-trading activity, we explain it and cite the manual. Where the law is uncertain or HMRC's view is open to challenge, we say so. Our own practical observations are clearly presented as ours, not as statements of HMRC policy.