Sow wisely for business success - Part 1: Setting up a new company

In the first of three articles examining how to grow a successful business by minimising your tax liabilities, Lesley Stalker, Paul Webb and Simon Paterson, partners at the Robert James Partnership, look at the start-up process.

When first starting up, most business owners are extremely cash conscious. This is the case regardless of whether starting a new business from scratch, or taking over a going concern and is understandable. Typically they will have left the security of their monthly salary and borrowed what initially seems a vast amount of money from either friends or family, or, as is often the case today, re-mortgaged using the equity in their homes. At this stage in the business lifecycle, it is common for entrepreneurs to be very short-termist, and do as much as possible "on the cheap", waiting for sales to start rolling in before investing in strategic advice.