August 31, 2026

• Selling your business is an opportunity to define what you want your wealth to accomplish.
• A sale changes the nature of your financial complexity. Investments, taxes, spending, estate planning, and family goals must now work together.
• Burkett Group’s integrated advisory team can turn the proceeds into a coordinated strategy tailored to your lifestyle and legacy.

Selling a business marks the culmination of decades of hard work. It also marks the beginning of a new financial chapter. The focus shifts from building and operating the business to determining how the resulting wealth should be preserved, invested, accessed, and ultimately transferred in a way that supports the owner’s lifestyle, family, and long-term legacy.

A business sale converts an operating asset into financial wealth. It does not eliminate complexity – in many cases, it increases it. After a sale, decisions about investing, spending, taxes, estate planning, and family governance are connected. A strong portfolio, thoughtful tax planning and a well-designed estate strategy can still produce a poor overall result if they are developed independently. That’s why having an integrated financial approach is critical to making your wealth last and achieve your goals.

The first step is to define what your wealth and legacy should accomplish.

Begin by defining what your wealth needs to accomplish

The first question is not what to invest in, but what you want the wealth to accomplish. That may include funding your lifestyle, making future purchases, retaining capital for new opportunities, supporting charitable causes, and ultimately transferring wealth to future generations.

Legacy planning is one important part of that broader discussion. Different families may have very different objectives for children, grandchildren, charities, family assets and the timing or control of future transfers.

Some clients want equal inheritances for children. Other clients want to fund education, support charity, preserve certain assets for family ownership or transfer wealth gradually during life. The plan should reflect those priorities before any legal or tax structure is finalized.

A clear wealth and legacy plan should answer:

• What level of annual spending is required?
• What major purchases are expected and how much capital should remain available for future business opportunities?
• What portion of the wealth should be set aside for children, grandchildren, or charity and when should beneficiaries receive them?
• Who should control the assets and are they prepared to manage significant wealth?
• How should different family circumstances be treated and how should the plan respond if those circumstances change through incapacity, death, divorce, or family conflict?

The answers to these questions will shape the rest of the plan, ensuring the will, corporate structure, insurance coverage, investment portfolio and tax strategy all support the same objectives.

Where the proceeds are held

After the goals are defined, the next step is to identify where the sale proceeds are held.

Depending on the transaction, the funds may be held personally, in an investment holding company or through a combination of personal and corporate accounts. That distinction matters because it affects access, taxation and distribution planning.

If proceeds are held personally, they may be available for spending and investing right away, but they still need to be managed with tax efficiency, liquidity and estate considerations in mind. If proceeds are retained in a corporation, they are not automatically available for personal use.

Personal proceeds

Consider a business owner who receives $8 million personally after the sale and expects to spend about $250,000 a year.

In that case, the portfolio should be built around time horizon and liquidity. Cash needed in the next few years should generally be managed with liquidity and capital preservation in mind, while capital intended for long-term growth can be invested with a greater emphasis on capital appreciation.

The plan also needs to account for portfolio income if the investment returns are intended to fund the owner’s lifestyle. Interest, dividends, taxable trust distributions and realized capital gains can create taxable income that does not necessarily correlate to cash available for personal spending. For example, taxable amounts reported on an investor’s T3 slip from a trust unit investment must be reported on their personal tax return even if the distribution was reinvested to purchase additional units rather than paid to the investor in cash.

That means the planning conversation should consider both spending needs and the tax consequences of the portfolio, not just investment return.

Holding company

Now consider a client who retains $8 million inside an investment holding company and needs about $250,000 annually for personal spending.

Here, the investment plan cannot be separated from the withdrawal plan. Interest, foreign income, dividends, and capital gains can have different corporate and personal tax effects. The relevant question is not simply what the portfolio earns, but how much wealth is ultimately available to the family after the applicable corporate and personal tax consequences are considered.

Investment income earned by a Canadian private corporation may generate refundable dividend tax balances, some of which may be recovered when the corporation pays taxable dividends to its shareholders. Capital gains and losses may also affect the corporation’s capital dividend account. Where a sufficient capital dividend account balance exists and the corporation makes the prescribed election with CRA, a tax-free capital dividend may be paid to a Canadian-resident shareholder.

The investment strategy should therefore be coordinated with the corporation’s tax accounts, the owner’s spending requirements and the family’s longer-term estate objectives. A portfolio decision that appears attractive based only on its pre-tax return may produce a different result once those factors are considered together.

The portfolio design, corporate tax accounts and shareholder withdrawal strategy therefore need to be coordinated. The investment manager, accountant, and tax advisor each need visibility into the same plan.

One coordinated plan

Burkett Group’s integrated approach is designed to avoid that fragmentation. By bringing together accounting, tax planning, investment management and family-office support, Burkett Group can evaluate each decision in the context of the client’s full financial picture. When legal, insurance or other specialized advice is needed, the team can coordinate those professionals within the broader strategy.

The goal is not simply to invest the proceeds or minimize tax in a single year. It is to create one coordinated plan that supports your lifestyle, protects your family’s wealth, and transfers that wealth according to your intentions.

If you’re considering selling your business or have done so recently and are unsure of the best next step, we invite you to connect with us.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Investment strategies involve risk, including the risk of loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investment decisions should be made based on individual circumstances and in consultation with a registered advisor. The historical data referenced is for illustrative purposes only, to help frame potential trade-offs between different implementation approaches, and should not be interpreted as predictive or prescriptive.