Year-end tax planning is mostly the discipline of using allowances that die at midnight on 5 April and positioning for changes you already know are coming. Almost nothing on the list below is clever; all of it is time-boxed, and every year we watch people lose real money to nothing more than the calendar. This year the list is longer than usual, because the next eighteen months carry an unusual stack of pre-announced changes — dividend and property rate rises, the pension IHT change, the repatriation facility closing — that reward acting in the current year specifically.
The use-it-or-lose-it list
- CGT annual exemption (£3,000). It does not carry forward. Harvest gains up to the exemption — via bed-and-ISA or bed-and-spouse if you want to keep the positions — and crystallise losses to bank against gains elsewhere;
- ISA allowance (£20,000). Also non-transferable between years — and with the cash-ISA cap of £12,000 arriving for under-65s from April 2027, this year and next are the last with full flexibility on the cash side;
- IHT gift exemptions. The £3,000 annual exemption (plus one year of carry-forward), £250 small gifts, and — for anyone with surplus income — starting or evidencing the normal-expenditure-out-of-income pattern that shelters unlimited regular giving;
- Pension contributions. The annual allowance plus up to three years of carry-forward — and note the direction of travel: NIC relief on salary-sacrificed pension contributions is being capped from April 2029, which makes the intervening years the window for front-loading sacrifice-based funding;
- Gift Aid. Higher-rate relief is claimed, not automatic — and a carry-back election can pull this year's giving into last year's higher-income return, but only in an on-time original return.
Owner-managers: the remuneration reset
The salary-versus-dividend calculation deserves a genuine re-run this year rather than a copy-forward: dividend rates rose two points in April 2026 (the ordinary rate is now 10.75%), employer NIC sits at 15%, and frozen thresholds keep dragging more income into higher bands. For many companies the answer still favours dividends, but by a thinner margin — and adjacent levers matter more: pension contributions from the company (25% corporation tax relief, no NIC), interest on directors' loans to the company, spreading income across a working spouse, and timing dividends either side of 5 April to manage bands. Where profits are strong, also check the capital side before year end: full expensing and the £1 million AIA make the timing of equipment purchases a tax decision as well as an operational one.
Position for what is already legislated
This is the section that changes each year, and right now it is crowded:
- Property and savings income rates rise two points from April 2027 (to 22%, 42% and 47%). Landlords weighing disposals, incorporation or ownership transfers between spouses have a rate-driven reason to conclude the analysis this year;
- Pensions enter IHT from April 2027. Estates that looked exempt need re-counting with pension pots included, and the responses — drawdown reordering, gifting from income, insurance — work best begun now; our pensions-IHT guide has the full playbook;
- The temporary repatriation facility's 12% rate ends with the current tax year — former remittance-basis users designating offshore funds pay 15% next year and lose the facility entirely after April 2028;
- Business owners: the £2.5 million business relief allowance and 18% BADR are the current terms — and both sit on every Budget speculation list, which argues for executing settled plans rather than parking them;
- MTD's next wave: sole traders and landlords over £30,000 join Making Tax Digital from April 2027, judged on the return being filed this January — software adopted now turns mandation into a non-event.
The hygiene items that prevent expensive letters
Beyond the planning: confirm payments on account reflect current-year reality (reducible if income has fallen; interest-bearing if over-reduced); check the High Income Child Benefit position where pay rises crossed thresholds; review company benefit and salary-sacrifice arrangements against the minimum wage floor before April's uplift; and — for anyone with undeclared income nagging at them — remember that voluntary disclosure before HMRC's data finds it is the cheapest exit that exists, and the data is finding people faster every year.
Running it as a process
Effective year-end planning is a January-to-March conversation, not a 4 April scramble: allowances need cash moved, elections need paperwork, dividends need reserves and minutes, and anything involving property or shares needs time to complete. Our tax planning team runs structured year-end reviews for individuals and owner-managed businesses — one meeting, a checklist like this one applied to your actual numbers, and the actions diarised while there is still a tax year left to act in. The allowances reset on 6 April either way; the only question is whether this year's were used.