Does the tax rate depend on when I agree the sale or when it completes?

Completion governs it. A deal agreed in March that completes in May falls on the later side of the tax year, and anti-forestalling rules limit arrangements designed purely to fix an earlier rate. Put the timing question to your own tax adviser while the deal is still being shaped.

Can I sell a facilities management business in five weeks?

Realistically, no. A prepared FM sale takes six to nine months from approach to completion, and diligence on a contract book is slower than in most sectors because a buyer reads the contracts one at a time and checks the people against a payroll. Five weeks buys you a narrow field of buyers and a weak negotiating position.

What are the qualifying conditions for the relief?

Broadly, the company must be a trading company and you must have held at least 5% of ordinary shares and voting rights, and have been an officer or employee, throughout the two years ending on the disposal. Recent restructures and share issues can reset that clock without anyone noticing, so it is worth checking before you plan around the relief.

If I miss the date, is it worth waiting a year?

Almost never, because the things that move the price in an FM sale move further than the rate does. Contract term at completion, renewal history and whether the business runs without you are each capable of shifting the number by more than a few percentage points of tax. Sell when the business is ready. A year spent extending contract terms and moving client relationships off the owner is worth more than any rate you were waiting for.

The 5 April Line for Facilities Management Owners

The RuleWhat the tax year end actually governs

The completion date governs the rate, not the date you instruct anybody and not the date you shake hands. Business Asset Disposal Relief is 10% on qualifying disposals completing on or before 5 April 2025, and the Autumn Budget on 30 October 2024 set the rate to 14% for disposals from 6 April 2025 and 18% from 6 April 2026. The relief is capped at £1m of qualifying gains across a lifetime.

Two conditions sit behind that and both take time rather than money. The company has to have been a trading company and you have to have held at least 5% of the ordinary share capital and voting rights, been an officer or employee, and met those conditions throughout the two years ending on the date of disposal. An owner who restructured recently should check the clock before assuming anything.

Anti-forestalling rules have applied to contracts entered into on or after Budget day, which removes the obvious workaround of exchanging now and completing later purely to fix a rate. This is worth raising with your own tax adviser rather than working from a general article, because the detail turns on how the contract is drafted.

The RunwayWhy the runway is longer than the calendar suggests

A facilities management sale run properly occupies six to nine months between the first approach and the money arriving, and that assumes the business was ready when the process started. Diligence in this sector is slower than in most, because a buyer is reading contracts one at a time and checking a TUPE population against a payroll.

The preparation that comes before it is longer again. Contract renewal evidence accumulates over a year, not a quarter. A concentration problem takes twelve months of deliberate smaller wins to soften. A business where the owner holds every client relationship personally needs at least a year of somebody else holding them before a buyer believes the transfer will survive.

Which is why compressing a sale to land on a date is usually the expensive choice. A rushed process narrows the buyer pool to whoever can move fastest, and a narrow pool prices differently from a competitive one. The arithmetic is rarely close: the difference between a well-run process and a hurried one on an FM business is measured in multiples of the difference between one tax rate and another.

A rushed process narrows the buyer pool to whoever can move fastest, and a narrow pool prices differently from a competitive one.

The WorkWhat March is genuinely good for

Use the year end for the housekeeping that shortens diligence later, which has nothing to do with the tax rate and survives whatever a future Budget does. A contract register is the first item: every contract, start date, end date, notice period, break clause, renewal history and the name of the person at the client who signs it off.

The second is the adjusted EBITDA working. Set out the addbacks now, while you can still remember what the one-off cost in month four was, and keep the evidence with them. Addbacks argued from memory eighteen months later are the ones buyers refuse.

The third is the people file. Employee liability information, the assignment of each person to a contract or service grouping, and the terms that came across with any TUPE transfer you have taken on. In FM that file is examined harder than the accounts, and it is far easier to assemble in a quiet March than in the middle of a process.

Before the Tax Year Turns

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