How Tax Planning Helps People Avoid Taxes - Legally

The goal of tax planning is to reduce the level of tax companies and individuals have to pay. In some respects tax planning and its counterpart tax mitigation could be construed as euphemisms for legal tax avoidance, without wanting the unsavoury and sometimes criminal connotations of 'tax avoidance'.

Most tax planning strategies available from financial advisors are targeted at high earning individuals and businesses looking to protect assess and income.

Tax laws tend to be unique to particular countries – although there are many similarities such as the commonality of paying income tax – and in the following instances of tax planning, they refer explicitly to tax planning strategies available for UK citizens, although many of the foundational principles pertain to many western countries.

All individuals in the UK earning income are liable to income tax, and consequently there's no surprise that income tax planning proves one of the most popular requests received by financial advisors and wealth protection companies.

There are numerous strategies employed in income tax mitigation in UK and they vary from individual circumstances to individual but many structures offering income tax relief of up to 80% of income tend to be remuneration trusts, with the qualifying threshold tending to be an income in excess of £100,000 p.a.

Remuneration trusts are an offshore vehicle whereby the trust invoices for your work, and this capital is then able to transferred back to the UK and re-invested tax-free. There is even the possibility of tax free loans being made back to private individuals in the UK.

The popularity of remuneration trusts comes from their being compliant for at least 15 years with the UK government's HMRC (Her Majesty's Revenue Collection – service overseeing taxation in the UK) guideline, and being accepted legally at QC level and the Upper Tier Tax Tribunal.

Large non-public corporations in the UK tend to be interested in a different type of tax mitigation – corporation tax planning. Again, there is a high entry threshold, typically profits in excess of £100k p.a. are required for private limited companies, limited liability partnerships and sole traders to qualify but unlike income tax mitigation, it's possible to mitigate up to 100% of the company's corporate tax liability.

Strategies such as the creation of trading losses again exploit loopholes to ensure complete compliance in the UK with HMRC. Income tax mitigation and corporate tax planning are merely two examples of the myriad tax planning strategies being taken advantage of by high earners in the UK. And, as will all tax planning, their purpose is to reduce or mitigate completely a company's or individual tax liability.