Budget Month and the HVAC Owner's Year-End Checklist

The KnownWhat is already legislated, and therefore already plannable

Business Asset Disposal Relief is 14% on qualifying gains up to a £1m lifetime limit, and it was set at the Autumn Budget on 30 October 2024 to rise again to 18% on 6 April 2026. That is not speculation, it is the current legislated position, and the completion date of a disposal is what fixes which rate applies to it. If an exit is anywhere on your horizon, that date is the one to plan around rather than any announcement.

The same Budget announced a cap on agricultural and business property relief for inheritance tax from April 2026, above which the 100% relief no longer applies in full. For an owner whose business is a large part of their estate, that changes the arithmetic of holding it rather than selling it, and it is a conversation to have with your own tax adviser rather than one to read about. I would raise it now because the effective date is closer than most owners realise.

Both of those are announced measures with legislated dates, which is what makes them plannable. That is the distinction worth holding on to through the next four weeks: an announced change with a date attached is something to work back from, and a forecast about what might be announced is not. Almost everything written about the Budget between now and the end of the month will be the second thing.

The UnknownNothing about a Budget that has not happened is worth acting on

Every autumn brings the same advice to sell before something happens, and every autumn most of it turns out to have been wrong about what would happen. Six to nine months separate a first approach from a completion, with preparation before that, so a deal started on a rumour in November completes long after the announcement it was reacting to. The timetable itself makes the strategy impossible.

The sensible position is the dull one. Know your number, know your legislated position, and let a Budget change your timing only if it changes something you can point at afterwards. Owners who sell well are almost never reacting to news; they are executing a plan made a year or two earlier, and a Budget is an input into that plan rather than a starting gun.

The UsefulThe year-end housekeeping that shortens next year's diligence

Close the year with the contract schedule reconciled: every agreement, its annual value, its renewal date and whether it renewed this autumn. Do the same with certifications, listing every registration and certificate against its expiry. Both documents take an afternoon in November and are worth a fortnight in a due diligence process eighteen months from now.

Then put this year's figures somewhere a stranger could follow them. Three years of accounts with a short note explaining anything unusual, the adjustments you would expect a buyer to make to arrive at adjusted EBITDA, and the reasons for them. Owners who do this annually find the conversation with an acquirer starts from their version of the numbers rather than from a reconstruction of them, which is worth more in a negotiation than it sounds on paper.

None of that is affected by anything announced this month, which is rather the point. The work that improves a sale is the work that would have been worth doing anyway, and November, with the heating season underway and the year's shape now obvious, is a reasonable time to do it.

Both documents take an afternoon in November and are worth a fortnight in a due diligence process eighteen months from now.