A business owner has two financial lives, and most planning looks at only one of them. The accountant looks after the company. A personal advisor, if there is one, looks after the owner. Nobody looks at the two together, which is where the money is: in how profit leaves the company, how the owner’s retirement is funded, what happens to the business if something happens to the owner, and what the business is worth on the day it is sold or handed on.
True Wealth plans both at once. We are a Central Bank regulated, whole of market broker based in Portlaoise, advising business owners across Ireland. A senior advisor models you and the company year by year, shows you the most tax-efficient route for the money, sets up the pension, the protection and the investments, and brings in tax advice when the plan needs it. The form on this page takes two minutes and is the first step.
What is a business owner financial plan?
It is one plan with two forecasts. The first is the company: profit, cash, what it can afford to put into a pension, what it needs to keep in reserve, what it is worth. The second is you: your income, your pensions, your family, your cover, the age you want to stop and the life you want after. The plan joins them, because every euro that leaves the company for you is a decision with a tax cost, and the cheapest route is rarely the one most owners take.
The plan covers six things: wealth extraction, retirement funding through the company, protection for the business and the family, surplus cash, the exit, and your staff. Each is below.
How do I take money out of the company with the least tax?
There are four main routes, and they are taxed very differently.
| Route | What the company pays | What you keep | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salary | Deductible for corporation tax, plus employer PRSI at 11.4% | Taxed at up to 40% income tax, 4.35% PRSI and up to 8% USC | Needed to a level, but the dearest way to move money above it |
| Dividend | Paid from profit already taxed at 12.5% | Taxed again at your marginal rate | Usually the worst of the four |
| Pension contribution | Deductible for corporation tax, no employer PRSI | Goes into your fund untaxed, grows tax free, 25% of it can come out as a tax-free lump sum at retirement | The most efficient route for money you do not need today |
| Keeping it in the company | 12.5% corporation tax, then a close company surcharge if investment income is left undistributed | Builds company value, taxed on the way out at exit | Right for reserves and reinvestment, wrong as a long-term savings account |
The plan sets the salary you need, routes what you do not need into the pension within Revenue limits, and keeps in the company only what the business should hold. For many owner-directors that single change is worth more than any investment decision they will make.
How do I fund my retirement through the company?
Through a master trust section or a company-funded PRSA, with the company paying in. Since January 2025 an employer contribution to a PRSA is not a benefit in kind up to 100% of the director’s salary, and a master trust allows funding on salary and service under Revenue’s maximum funding rules, which for a director with years of service behind them can be a great deal more. Both are deductible for the company, both grow free of tax, and both give you a tax-free lump sum at retirement.
A director who has had the company for twenty years and never funded a pension properly can often catch up fast. The plan works out the maximum the company can put in, what it can afford to put in, and the mix of fund and timing that gets you to the retirement income you want. Our self-employed and directors page covers the pension products in detail; the plan is where the number comes from.
How do I protect the business and my family?
Three covers, usually written in the company’s name and paid for by the company.
Key person cover pays the company a lump sum if you, or someone the business cannot run without, dies or is diagnosed with a serious illness. It covers lost profit, a replacement and any loan you have personally guaranteed, so the business keeps trading. Shareholder protection pays the surviving shareholders the money to buy a deceased shareholder’s shares from the family, under an agreement drawn up in advance, so the family gets fair value in cash and the business stays with the people running it. Executive income protection pays your income if illness or injury keeps you out of the business, with the premium paid by the company and deductible.
Extract, protect and grow what the business makes.
Your role, the company and what you want from it are enough to start. A senior advisor models you and the business together and sets up what you choose.
What should I do with surplus cash in the company?
Cash left on deposit inside a company earns little, loses value to inflation and, where it is investment income left undistributed, attracts a close company surcharge on top of corporation tax. The plan looks at three uses for it in order: the reserve the business should keep, the pension contribution that takes it out of the company tax-efficiently, and company investments for the rest.
Company investments put the surplus into funds held by the company, with the tax on growth handled inside the structure and the money still available to the business. Deposits, bonds and multi-asset funds are compared on return, access and tax. Our company investments page quotes it; the plan decides how much should go there and how much should go to the pension instead.
How do I plan an exit from the business?
The exit is where the biggest tax decisions sit, and they are made years before the sale. Retirement relief can remove capital gains tax on the sale or transfer of a business from age 55, within limits that depend on your age and whether the buyer is a child. Entrepreneur relief taxes the first €1 million of qualifying gains at 10% instead of 33%. Both have conditions on ownership, working time and the assets involved that need to be met in advance, not on the day.
The plan models the exit years early: what the business is worth, what the reliefs would save, how the pension and the sale proceeds combine into a retirement income, and what a handover to family or a management team would look like. Where the detail needs a tax specialist, we bring one in and sit at the same table.
What about my staff?
A company pension scheme, death in service cover, group income protection and group health insurance for your staff are deductible for the company, keep good people, help you hire, and keep you out of My Future Fund’s rising contribution schedule. Our group schemes page covers every option and has its own form. The plan ties the staff package to the company forecast so you know what it costs before you commit.
Cash flow modelling for owners
We put the company and you into financial planning software and run both forward year by year to age 100, with corporation tax, income tax, pension limits, inflation and investment returns built in. The model is stress tested thousands of times, up to 10,000 scenarios, so you see the pessimistic, the average and the optimistic outcome for the exit, the pension and the years after.
Your plan lives in an app for desktop, iPhone and Android, and your advisor updates it when the business changes: a good year, a bad year, a new partner, a sale on the horizon.
How do we build your plan?
- Tell us about you and the business. The form on this page: your role, the company, what it does and what you want from it. No accounts needed at this stage.
- Your advisor gathers the detail. A short online fact find for the figures the two forecasts need, with the accounts and policies if you have them to hand.
- The forecasts. You and the company modelled year by year and stress tested, with the extraction route, the pension number, the protection gaps and the exit marked.
- Your plan review. A senior advisor walks you through it, with tax advice brought in where the plan needs it, and agrees the decisions with you.
- Set up. Whatever you decide, we set it up with the providers and handle the paperwork, for you and for the staff.
- Kept on track. Your plan lives in the app, and your advisor reviews it with you as the business changes.
Worked example: an owner of 48 with a company making €200,000
Dara owns an engineering company with eight staff that makes €200,000 a year before her salary. She pays herself €90,000, leaves the rest in the company, has a pension of €120,000 that the company stopped funding during a bad year, and has life cover from the bank for the mortgage. She wants to sell or hand over the business at 60.
Her plan found that the money left in the company was building a surcharge problem and that the company could fund €60,000 a year into a master trust section for her, deductible, with no PRSI and no benefit in kind. It found no key person cover and no shareholder agreement with her co-director. It found that a sale at 60 would qualify for retirement relief on most of the proceeds if the ownership and working conditions were kept, and entrepreneur relief on the rest.
What she did: the company began a €60,000 a year pension contribution, saving €7,500 in corporation tax and putting the full amount in her fund; €150,000 of surplus cash went into company investments with a reserve kept on deposit; key person and shareholder cover were set up with a buy-sell agreement; and the staff got a company pension and death in service, which moved them out of My Future Fund. The exit forecast shows a retirement income above her target from 60, with the sale proceeds largely free of capital gains tax.
Figures are illustrative. Every plan is built on the client’s own numbers.
