Helen Clarke > Irwin Mitchell > London, England > Lawyer Profile

Helen Clarke

helen.clarke@irwinmitchell.com

Work Department

Private Client- Personal Tax, Trusts

Position

Helen is a leading private wealth partner with over 20 years of experience in her field. She specialises in bespoke tax and estate planning involving complex trust and company structures for domestic affluent individuals and entrepreneurial wealth creators, business owners and senior executives including those at large PLCs with significant equity stakes. She leads the national team’s UK business wealth practice and understands the complexities and interaction of private and corporate taxes and the commercial rationale of transactions alongside the personal aspects driving the planning.

She has significant experience advising close company participators on structuring and re-structuring their shareholdings to maximise tax efficiency for them and their families and to facilitate their overriding objectives. This often involves working alongside founders to ensure that their business interests are structured tax efficiently from the outset for personal tax efficiency and including advice throughout the evolution of the business including planning in advance of sale and post-sale to facilitate a tax efficient exit and succession. Helen also advises alongside her corporate partner’s on management buy-outs and employee ownership trusts.

As well as advising on existing structures, Helen also creates and advises on the use of personal and family investment companies for controlled wealth transfer purposes. She recently authored two chapters of the Law Society Guide to Inheritance Tax on lifetime planning for business owners and planning using alternative vehicles for estate planning.