Business Exit Planning for Central Coast Businesses
Sit down with a chartered accountant while the structure, the numbers and the timing can still be changed.
- CA ANZ chartered firm and Registered Tax Agents
- Planning that starts years before the contract, not weeks
- A detailed quote before any work starts
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By the time you have an offer, most of the outcome is already fixed
A buyer pays for what they can verify: earnings that hold up under examination, contracts that transfer, staff who stay, and a business that keeps running when you stop turning up. None of that can be arranged in the month before a contract.
The tax side behaves the same way. The eligibility tests for the small business concessions are measured against your group just before the sale, and one of the concessions asks whether you have owned the asset continuously for 15 years. Whether you pass is largely settled by decisions already made, often years ago, by someone who was not thinking about a sale.
There is now a date on the calendar as well. Under legislation passed on 26 June 2026, the 50% CGT discount for individuals and trusts is replaced from 1 July 2027 by cost base indexation and a minimum 30% tax on certain capital gains, and assets held on 30 June 2027 are treated as sold and reacquired at market value on that date. The four small business CGT concessions survive. What that combination does to your exit depends on your structure, your cost base and your timing, which is a conversation for now rather than for 2027.
Exit planning is that work done in order: what the business is worth today and why, what would lift that number, which exit actually suits you, and what has to change in the structure before anything is on foot
With MYC Partners, you’ll always have:
A clear view of what a buyer would pay for the business as it stands, and what is holding that number down
The exit chosen deliberately, whether that is succession, a third-party sale or a wind-up, with the cost of each one worked out
Structure and ownership decisions made in the right year rather than the year of the sale
One firm coordinating with your solicitor, your broker and your licensed financial adviser, so nothing falls through the gaps between them
Who We Help With Business Exit Planning
Exit planning starts earning its fee once the business is worth enough that structure decides the outcome, and once you have a date in mind, even a rough one.
Dental and medical practice owners. Selling to an associate, merging into a group, or winding a solo practice back over several years. Equipment finance, service entity arrangements and the practice’s dependence on one practitioner all sit inside the price. See also our work with medical practices.
Law firm principals. Work in progress, trust account obligations and files a buyer cannot value without seeing them. Practice sales are usually staged across financial years, which makes the year the money lands a decision rather than an accident.
Construction and building companies. Licences that do not simply transfer with a sale of business, retentions and defect liability that outlive settlement, and a pipeline a buyer will discount if it runs on the owner’s relationships.
Real estate agency principals. Rent rolls and sales books are valued differently and are often sold separately. Which entity holds the rent roll, and how long it has been held there, matters more than most principals expect.
Restaurant and online business owners. Leases, franchise and licence agreements, platform and payment accounts, supplier terms, and intellectual property registered in the wrong name. These are the items that stall a deal once due diligence starts.
What Business Exit Planning Covers
Exit readiness and what the business is worth to a buyer
We assess the business like a buyer’s accountant will: normalised earnings, owner dependence, customer concentration, and record quality. You get a realistic starting value and the specific list of what is suppressing it.
Succession, third-party sale or wind-up
Three exits, three different jobs. Succession needs funding and a timetable; a sale needs a business that survives due diligence; a wind-up follows ASIC’s strict deregistration rules, and getting the order wrong is costly.
Structure and ownership decisions that cannot wait
Who holds the shares, which entity owns the premises, and what your Division 7A loan account looks like. Concession eligibility is tested against your structure just before the sale, so today’s setup usually decides the outcome.
Getting the business through due diligence
A buyer checks financials, lodgements, employment records, leases, licences and key contracts, discounting for anything missing. We go through that file before the buyer does, and keep the records you’ll need for five years after.
Where the proceeds land, and your position afterwards
What you live on afterwards depends on which entity receives the proceeds, in which year, and in whose name. We work that through with your licensed financial adviser, including how exemption amounts fit within the CGT cap.
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Why Central Coast Business Owners Come to MYC Partners for Exit Planning
Plenty of firms will help you sell the business. Fewer will tell you, three years out, that it is not ready.
A chartered firm. MYC Partners is a CA ANZ chartered practice and a Registered Tax Agent. Chartered membership carries continuing education and ethical obligations well above the minimum standard for lodging a return.
25+ years across the same decisions. Kylie Baker has spent more than 25 years working with owners through restructures, sales, purchases and ATO reviews. Exit planning is largely pattern recognition, and knowing which pattern you are in removes a lot of guessing.
Depth for when the group gets complicated. The firm holds SMSF Registered Auditor status and carries out independent audits for trusts and high-revenue organisations. Most exits involve the company, the trust, the SMSF and the owners personally, and planning one entity at a time tends to move the problem rather than solve it.
We plan from your live file. As a Xero Gold Certified Partner and MYOB Certified Consultant, we work from your actual numbers, not a reconstruction of last year's return. A buyer will test what they are shown, so we test it first.
A free discovery call, then a quote before anything starts. The first conversation with Kylie costs nothing and is not a sales pitch. Exit work runs across years, so you get a detailed quote before each stage begins and you know exactly what it covers.
Exit planning is the long view. Tax planning is the annual companion to it, and both sit inside our business advisory work.
Business Exit Planning Questions Business Owners Ask Us
Business exit planning is the multi-year process of preparing a business, its structure and its owner for the day ownership changes hands, whether that happens through succession, a sale to a third party, or a wind-up. It covers valuation drivers, ownership and entity structure, deal terms, employee and contract obligations, and where the proceeds end up. MYC Partners runs this as a staged engagement rather than a single meeting.
Earlier than most owners expect, because several of the decisions cannot be reversed close to a sale. Some concession tests look back over long periods (one requires 15 years of continuous ownership), structural changes take time to bed down, and a buyer's discount for owner dependence takes years of work to remove. If you have a date in mind, even a vague one, the planning starts now.
Most small business sales are valued on normalised, sustainable earnings and a multiple that reflects risk, so the work is in proving the earnings and reducing the risk. Owner dependence, customer concentration, unrecorded income, informal contracts and messy records all pull the multiple down. MYC Partners works through what a buyer's adviser will look for before the business goes to market.
It might, and that is exactly why it is worth modelling early. Legislation passed on 26 June 2026 replaces the 50% CGT discount for individuals and trusts with cost base indexation from 1 July 2027, adds a minimum 30% tax on certain capital gains, and treats assets held on 30 June 2027 as sold and reacquired at market value on that date. The four small business CGT concessions remain available, and the turnover threshold for the 50% active asset reduction increases from $2 million to $10 million. Whether that leaves you better or worse off depends on your structure, cost base and timing, so it needs to be worked through on your numbers.
They are different projects with different risks. A third-party sale usually pays more, faster, and demands the most preparation; an internal succession keeps the business intact but needs a funding plan, a handover timetable and agreement on what happens if the successor cannot pay or does not perform. We cost both before you commit to either.
Where a sale is a transfer of business under the Fair Work Act, the new employer has to recognise employees' service for entitlements including sick and carer's leave, parental leave and flexible working requests. If the buyer is not an associated entity, they can choose not to recognise service for annual leave and redundancy, in which case the seller pays those out on termination. It is a negotiation point with a real dollar value, so it belongs in the planning rather than in the final week before settlement.
The sale of a business can be GST-free as a supply of a going concern, but only where all the conditions are met: the sale is for payment, the buyer is registered or required to be registered for GST, the seller supplies everything necessary for continued operation, the business is carried on until the day of supply, and the parties have agreed in writing that the supply is of a going concern. Getting one of those wrong makes the sale taxable, which is an expensive surprise after settlement.
A wind-up is a legitimate exit and sometimes the right one, but it has its own sequence: final lodgements and employee obligations, cancelling GST and then the ABN (within 28 days of ceasing business activities), disposing of assets, and deregistering the company with ASIC. Business records still have to be kept for five years afterwards. We map the order, because doing these steps out of sequence creates problems that are difficult to reverse.
Getting cash out of a company is its own decision. Retained profits, franking credits and any Division 7A loan account all affect how much of the sale proceeds actually reaches you personally and when, and a shareholder loan does not clear itself simply because the business has been sold. This is general information, not advice about your circumstances, and the right answer depends on the entities involved.
Fees depend on the number of entities and how complicated the position is, so you will have a detailed quote before any work begins, and the first conversation is a free discovery call with Kylie. You do not have to move your compliance work across to engage us for exit planning, though if you decide to, we handle the professional letter, the records request and the ATO nominations.