A client for whom we provided the registered office and related services had an international business, parented and listed in the UK.

We identified that the company had a majority of non-UK shareholders, but because the group was parented through the UK, these shareholders, many of whom lived in countries with lower taxes than the UK, were losing part of their share of the company profits in UK corporate tax.

Because of this, and in view of the fact that most of the company’s income arose outside the UK, we recommended that the company consider a corporate inversion, placing an Isle of Man parent at the top of the structure, and placing non-UK trading entities beneath it.

Working with lawyers and a Big 4 accounting firm, we helped the client to complete the inversion process so that their group is now parented and headquartered in the Isle of Man. The advantage of this is that they now have greater ability to reinvest in the future of the business due to their being no taxation on dividends paid back to the Isle of Man parent, whilst the investors suffer tax at their domestic income tax rates rather than seeing a percentage of the entire group’s profit being paid as UK tax.