Paying yourself a salary when a director of a limited company

[Sugar Ray]

Hi

I set up my own limited company and am now looking to pay myself a salary
I have �60k in the business account.

i was think of paying 5k to cover NI and 25 in dividends - advice appreciated

[-Zorro-]

Yep..that would be tax efficient. Only prob is if you are starting up and taking a while to make a profit, you cant pay a dividend if you dont have the reserves (profit and shares) to support it. You would have to pay the divi back to the company.

So make sure you have regular management accounts, even rough ones you do yourself on SAGE, say quarterly, when you do your VAT Return, which show the companies financial position.

If you made a profit in earlier part of the year but loss in latter part, then as long as you have management information (management accounts) showing that when you paid the earlier interim divis you had profits to support them, then you would be ok i believe if you made an overall loss for the year.

If you paid yourself a straight wage then you would not have this problem of taking money out when making losses, although there would be other legal issues to be conncerned with regarding trading whilst insolvent.

Your suggested pay structure for yourself would appear tax beneficial at the moment as no NI would be paid the dividends, although I believe the gov are looking in to that tax issue.

Your total pay being �30k would not push you in to the higher rate of tax, unless you have other income, therefore the divi route is the best route to save tax. There would be problems on the tax saving issue if you did go into higher rate of tax, with the divi route being restricted I believe.

I would point out that although I am an accountant, I do not specialise in tax so there are probably others on here who could give more specific and up to date tax advice.