Ask an expert: Winding up a company on retirement

Question

Shareholder directors (husband and wife) are reaching retirement age and looking to cease trading sell the company's assets and take the cash out. They could obviously wind up the company (either informally or via a liquidator) and receive a capital distribution. They should be entitled to entrepreneurs’ relief (assuming the conditions are all met) so gains would be taxable at 10%. However they are all basic rate taxpayers so do not pay any tax on dividends (as the associated tax credit is the only tax due). So it would actually be more tax efficient for them to extract the cash from the company as dividends rather than as capital...