Boring calculation for people in the UK (as I am, and I&#x27;ve thought about this quite a bit ;-)).<p>Under certain conditions you can use &quot;Entrepreneurs&#x27; Relief&quot; to only pay 10% capital gains on your sale of a business (up to a limit of £10m), so a £3m sale could net you £2.7m in hand.<p>Depending on <i>many</i> circumstances, £1m in dividends (per year) should net you around £750k. So it would take about 3.6 years to make the same as selling for current 3x annual profit. However, if your profits were increasing by more than 10% per year, it would be a wash.