Tax Planning

Your financial plan deserves a tax conversation.
We are here for it.

Whether you live and work in the UK, have recently moved, are planning to leave, or manage wealth across more than one country - we help individuals and families understand their UK tax position and make better financial decisions as a result.

A note on what we do. Skybound does not provide formal tax advice. The information on this page is intended to help you understand the issues, ask better questions, and make more informed financial decisions. For advice specific to your circumstances, we will guide you to the right specialist.

For most people, UK tax sits quietly in the background - manageable, predictable, handled. Then something changes. A promotion. A business sale. A property. A pension decision. A move abroad. A return home. An inheritance. And suddenly the rules feel designed to catch you out rather than help you.

The frustration is rarely just the amount of tax. It is the uncertainty. Not knowing whether a decision made today creates a problem in five years. Not knowing which allowances you are not using. Not knowing whether a deadline has already passed.

We have these conversations with clients every week - with people who have lived in the UK their whole lives and with people whose financial lives span several countries. And the consistent finding is the same: the clients who fare best are not necessarily the ones who paid the most in professional fees. They are the ones who understood their position early enough to plan around it.

That is what this page is about. Helping you understand what questions to ask, what issues might affect you, and what a properly joined-up financial plan looks like - so that when we sit down together, we can talk about more than just your investments.

Who This Is For

Is this relevant to You?

If any of these describe your situation, the conversations on this page will matter to your financial plan:

UK-based clients:

Living and working in the UK

  • You want to make sure your financial plan and your tax position are actually working together
  • You are a business owner, director or senior professional with income from multiple sources — salary, dividends, bonuses, share schemes or rental income
  • You are approaching retirement and want to think through pension access, ISA drawdown and estate planning before you make irreversible decisions
  • You have property - a home, a buy-to-let, or both - and want to understand the tax implications of owning, renting or selling
  • You have family wealth conversations to have: gifts, trusts, inheritance, passing assets to the next generation
  • You have recently sold, or are about to sell, a business or significant asset and want to understand the tax position before the event, not after

Internationally mobile clients:

Moving, returning or managing across borders

  • You live outside the UK but still have UK income, property, pensions or family wealth ties
  • You are moving to or from the UK and want to understand the tax implications before you go
  • You are drawing - or about to draw - a UK pension from abroad
  • You hold assets across more than one country and are not sure how they are being taxed, or whether you are being taxed twice
  • You have recently returned to the UK and want to understand whether your existing structures and assets are still set up correctly

You do not need to have a crisis or a deadline to find this useful

Many of our most valuable planning conversations happen well before either.

Talk To An Adviser

What we help you achieve

What We Help You Achieve

Our tax-aware planning conversations are not about filing returns or producing tax reports. They are about making sure the financial decisions you take - on investments, pensions, estate planning, property and business - are made with a clear picture of the tax landscape, not in spite of it.

01

Understand the UK tax landscape

How the UK taxes your income, gains and estate - and where the biggest planning opportunities sit.

02

Identify the decisions where timing matters

Asset sales, pension access, gifts, business exits, property moves, arrivals and departures.

03

Structure wrappers and ownership correctly

Investment wrappers, pension structures and asset ownership set up to reflect your tax position - not just your return targets.

04

Spot the easy-to-miss opportunities

Planning opportunities that are hard to recover once a deadline has passed.

05

Review structures still fit your life

Particularly if your circumstances have changed since they were set up.

06

Know when you need a specialist

We tell you when a specialist tax adviser should be alongside us - and what to ask them.

Ready to see what a tax-aware financial plan looks like for your situation?

A 30-minute conversation. No fee. No obligation. Just a clearer picture.

Core Topics · Hub-and-Spoke

Tax issues we regularly discuss with clients

Each topic below sits inside a larger financial planning conversation. The summaries here are deliberately plain English - they are starting points, not advice. Each links to a dedicated page where you can go deeper before we speak.

Income

UK Income Tax

For individuals, business owners and internationally mobile clients - understanding how PAYE, dividends, rental income and foreign earnings all fit together.

Capital Gains

UK Capital Gains Tax

For residents, returning residents and expats - timing, rebasing, annual exemption and the 60-day property reporting window.

Estate

UK Inheritance Tax

For UK families and internationally mobile individuals - after the 2025 long-term residence reforms and the 2027 pension changes.

Property

UK Property Tax

For owners, landlords, non-residents and returning residents - SDLT, the non-resident surcharge, rental income and capital gains on disposal.

Retirement

UK Pension Tax

For people approaching retirement, living abroad or recently returned - annual allowance, MPAA, drawdown and cross-border withdrawal.

Residence

The Statutory Residence Test

Automatic overseas tests, automatic UK tests and the sufficient ties test - the framework that underpins almost every cross-border conversation.

Cross-border

Double Tax Treaties & FTCR

How treaties allocate taxing rights, and how foreign tax credit relief prevents the same income being taxed twice.

Wrappers

ISAs, Bonds & Wrappers

A comparison of tax-efficient wrappers for UK and international clients - ISAs, pensions, onshore and offshore bonds, GIAs.

Business

Business Owners & Shareholders

Tax-efficient extraction, BADR, share schemes and what to plan before a sale or exit event.

How tax planning fits into your financial plan with us

We are not your tax advisers. Here is why that matters.

Skybound is a wealth management firm. Our expertise is in building and managing financial plans - investment strategies, pension structures, estate planning and cross-border wealth - for individuals and families at every stage of life, whether they live here in the UK or across multiple countries.

We are not qualified tax accountants and we do not file returns or produce formal tax opinions. But separating tax awareness from financial planning is, in our experience, one of the most expensive mistakes clients make. The two inform each other at every stage, and a financial plan that ignores the tax landscape is not a complete plan.

01

We understand your full picture

In our first conversation, we look at your income, assets, plans, family situation and life events. Tax questions are considered as part of the wider picture, not as a separate issue.

02

We identify what needs attention

We assess where tax may affect key decisions around investments, pensions, property, estate planning or business matters. If specialist tax advice is needed, we will say so clearly and help involve the right expert.

03

We build the full plan

Your financial plan is shaped with your tax position in mind. We align wrappers, pension timing, asset structure and estate planning around the areas where planning can add the most value.

E-Guides

Related E-Guides

Planning across borders? Download our country-specific tax guides to understand the key rules, risks and planning questions that may affect your income, investments, pensions and estate planning.

Related reading from our insights library

Browse All Articles

Why Skybound

What makes Skybound the right partner for this

There are tax accountants who do financial planning. There are financial planners who know nothing about tax. The value Skybound offers sits in the gap between those two things - whether you have lived in the UK your whole life, have recently arrived, or are managing wealth across multiple countries.

01

Domestic and cross-border complexity, handled

We work with UK-based clients with straightforward residency and with clients whose financial lives span multiple countries. The planning principles are the same; the layers vary.

02

One joined-up conversation

Your investments, pensions, estate plan and tax position are discussed together, not in separate silos.

03

Proactive, not reactive

The most useful planning conversations happen before a move, a sale, a retirement or a gift. Not after.

04

We know when to bring in a specialist

We will not pretend to be your tax accountant, but we will make sure you have the right one and that they are working from the same picture we are.

05

Clarity, not anxiety

Clients tell us they leave our conversations understanding their financial position better, not just feeling more anxious about it.

06

Led by specialists, not generalists

Our tax planning proposition is led by a Chartered Accountant with a decade of Big Four experience - and surrounded by a team that lives and breathes cross-border wealth.

Shil Shah

Group Head of Tax Planning & Private Wealth Adviser

Shil leads Skybound's group-wide tax planning proposition across the UK, Switzerland, Europe, the US, the Middle East and beyond — including our Global Partners, Athletes & Creators and Women Like Us sub-brands.

Before joining Skybound, Shil spent nine years at Deloitte and KPMG, advising business owners, senior corporate leaders, non-UK domiciliaries and relocating talent on residency, domicile, remittance basis planning, offshore structures, trusts and UK property taxation. He later advised at a Partner Practice of the UK's largest FTSE 100 financial advice group.

Clients say Shil's value comes from pairing deep technical tax capability with a rare understanding of expat lives — and from being able to explain the complex cleanly, in plain English, without the defensive jargon.

Case Studies

Situations we have helped clients navigate

Every case study here is anonymised and representative. The scenarios are typical of conversations we have every week - and they cover both UK-based and internationally mobile clients.

UK Business Owner

A company sale, structured before the term sheet was signed

We helped a UK-based business owner plan a company sale - structuring the timing and extraction strategy ahead of completion to reflect both the investment position and the tax outcome.

UK Family · Pre-Retirement

A full review before irreversible decisions were made

We reviewed the pension, ISA and estate planning position for a UK family approaching retirement - identifying planning opportunities they had not been told about by their previous adviser.

UAE → UK Return

Reordering assets before residence resumed

We helped a UAE-based client plan a return to the UK - reordering assets before residence resumed to convert a potential tax problem into a planning opportunity.

Cross-Border Family

Understanding what was genuinely at risk - and what wasn't

We supported a cross-border family with UK property, an overseas investment portfolio, and a growing IHT exposure - helping them understand what was genuinely at risk and what was not.

Senior Executive

Restructuring to escape the 60% marginal trap

We helped a senior executive understand the tax implications of a complex remuneration package - salary, bonus, share options and pension - and restructure contributions to reduce their adjusted net income below the personal allowance taper.

Returning Expat · Pension

A UK pension drawdown decision that looked simple - and wasn't

We reviewed a client's withdrawal plan ahead of UK residence resuming - identifying a treaty interaction that would have materially changed the outcome if the withdrawal had gone ahead unchanged.

All case studies are anonymised and illustrative. Past outcomes are not a reliable indicator of future results, and the planning options that applied to one client may not apply to another. Case summaries are provided to illustrate the nature of conversations we have, not to constitute a personal recommendation.

Why Choose Skybound?

Through a combination of passion for what we do, a desire to innovate and our ambition to define the future of the offshore advice industry, Skybound exists to guide you through the important decisions required today, to ensure you benefit from the freedom of tomorrow.

Talk To An Adviser

Frequently Asked

Before we speak - the questions clients ask most

If you've read this far and still have something on your mind, it's probably one of these. Most of them end the same way: the fastest way to answer the question for your specific situation is a 30-minute conversation.

Still have a question?

The best way to answer it for your situation is a short conversation. No fee. No obligation.

Book a free planning conversation
Could one financial decision today create a tax problem later?
Am I planning around tax - or just reacting to it?
Do my investments, pensions and estate plan actually work together from a tax perspective?
Is my accountant enough, or do I need a financial planning conversation too?
Could returning to the UK make my existing structures less suitable?
If I live in a low-tax or zero-tax country, do I still need to worry about UK tax?
When should I speak to someone - before or after I make the decision?

Talk To An Adviser

Whether you are reviewing pensions, investments, property, inheritance planning, a move abroad, or a return to the UK, we can help you understand what may need attention and where specialist tax advice may be required.

Request A Call Back

By completing this form, you are consenting to receive telephone communication from Skybound Wealth Management, in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Skybound Wealth phone icon yellow
Thank you!
Your call back request has been received and we will arrange for a member of our team to call you at your desired time.
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form

Talk To An Adviser

You can reach us directly by calling us between the hours of 8:30am and 5pm at each of our respective offices and we will immediately assist you.

Request A Call Back

By completing this form, you are consenting to receive telephone communication from Skybound Wealth Management, in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Skybound Wealth phone icon yellow
Thank you!
Your call back request has been received and we will arrange for a member of our team to call you at your desired time.
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form