In a stock purchase, tack the available cash of the business onto the purchase price and ask the seller to leave that cash behind instead of extracting it.
Why? It can be more tax efficient for the seller. When extracting income, they may pay regular income tax (35-40%). When selling shares, they pay capital gains (23.8%). So if there’s $1m of cash, that’s >$100k of tax savings.
Long shot bonus: Cash on the balance sheet might enable some asset-based loan capacity too.
