Portive started with a problem of our own.
We run a number of different businesses, both trading and investment. They hold shares, funds and bonds through more than one broker, and our books are kept in Xero. We buy investments ourselves and through discretionary managers, and buying and selling is very simple. Getting our investments into the accounts correctly took far longer: broker statements retyped line by line, a spreadsheet rebuilt every year-end to work out the gains, and the same figures checked again from scratch by the accountant. That’s why we built Portive: to solve our own problem.
But none of this is particularly unusual. It’s a problem shared by every UK company that invests, from a trading company like your local plumber putting surplus cash to work, to a family investment company whose main business is investment. They’re all taxed under the same rules, and most deal with them the same way: by hand, once a year, against a deadline.
Why nothing already did it
Accounting software such as Xero records what you tell it, typically from a bank feed. Portfolio tools tell you what your investments are worth, based on your trades. Neither knows how UK corporation tax treats them, and the two don’t talk to each other. Neither knows that the profit on selling a gilt is income rather than a gain, that most dividends a company receives are exempt, or that shares in the same company are pooled together and matched in a set order when they are sold.
That knowledge has lived with accountants and in spreadsheets. We decided to build it into software instead.
Rules from the source
Every tax rule Portive applies comes directly from the legislation and from HMRC’s own published guidance — read at the source, not taken from a summary of it. When a rule changes, Portive applies the version that was in force on the day each transaction happened. And we re-check those sources every week, so we know when something has changed.
Worked out, not guessed
Portive is deterministic. The same transactions always give the same answer, worked out the same way, with the working shown. The tax treatment is not decided by AI.
That matters because a tax return is not somewhere “usually right” is good enough. A black box can’t tell you why it reached an answer. Portive can, so you and your accountant can check it before anything is posted. And there’s a record of it: the journals in your accounting system and, most importantly, the calculations behind them in Portive.
Starting with Xero
We are starting with Xero, because that is where our own books are kept and where many smaller UK companies keep theirs. The engine that works out the tax doesn’t depend on it, and we expect to add other accounting platforms over time. If you use a different platform, such as Sage or QuickBooks, let us know and we’ll see what we can do.
What Portive isn’t
It isn’t advice. Portive works out how each transaction is treated under the rules; it doesn’t tell you what to buy or sell, and your company’s tax return stays with your accountant.
If this is your problem too
We’d like to hear from you. Register your interest, or write to us at hello@portive.co.uk.