Joined a webinar hosted by the Federation for Small Businesses yesterday - lots of very good assistance programmes in place but still sweet Fanny Adams for those of use who drew dividends instead of wages and no sign at present of that situation changing.
Happy days
Quick question regarding self employed non limited partnership.
Am I right in saying that if you exceeded 50K net profit for the year 18-19 you won’t receive a payment even though the average for the 3 years don’t exceed 50K?
It’s funny all we keep hearing is how hard done by the self employed are, especially as payments are going to be based on what they told the revenue, yet if company directors say stuff it I’ve had enough there are going to be an awful lot of people on the dole. I know several who are just about there.
Not really. If you were to pay all similar taxes as a company owner and single employee of a limited company, then you would be paying considerably more than an employee - an additional employers 12.8% NI to start with.
Also, quite a few self employed people have seasonal or cyclical income, which doesn’t suit a lot of people who like the safety net of being an employee.
Surely, if someone has paid a considerable amount of taxes into the system, then they should be treated fairly when something like this happens ...
It's just a matter of time...
Where should it end - director’s dividends treated differently to other shareholder’s dividends?
What about people living off savings and now getting reduced dividend income?
Some real spiteful stuff going on here - this is the G&D (apparently....).
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
On your first point, you would have to be stupid to pay out your company income as salary. Most (if not all) companies of the type you highlight would pay out a minimum as PAYE salary and could therefore if they paid out less than £732 per month avoid the employer NI charge completely. They could then pay out the restas dividend which does not attract any NI. If you do the figures then you will see that doing it this way results in much less tax or NI to the government biut I guess you already knew this.
Your second point is not really relevant to the dividend /taxation point. There is some logic in saying that if you have seasonal or cyclical income then perhaps you should put funds aside to deal with this.
On your third point, this really relates back to your first point where it can be shown that most companies that you highlight would not pay the same considerable amount of taxes as a PAYE employee/employer would. They would pay less.
And? If my business didn’t exist there would be no service provided and no VAT paid to the taxman by anyone. Would that be preferable?
People like me and Tony pay bucketloads of tax every year. Plenty of folks have chipped into this thread without even a basic understanding of how small limited companies work. But keep going, you’ll get something right eventually.
In fairness most accountants will have just told the director to remunerate themselves as such.
I expect this isn't so much an attack on directors but a concern that many "one man ltds" will simply furlough themselves.
Speaking with customers and friends I think the furlough scheme is being abused at the moment with many getting the govt to pay salaries that in normal times the company would have paid. I don't mean bars etc that are closed but businesses that are a bit slower than normal at the moment.
To clarify something - you don’t have the option of dividends if you are a sole trader. Just good old schedule D income tax on your profits.
You wouldn’t. We would, though, in addition to income tax, and the dividends we pay ourselves are subject to both.
Right, quite frankly I’ve enough to worry about without agitating myself in this thread. I certainly won’t forget those who somehow think we deserve to be in the position we now find ourselves, though. Karma’s a bitch.
Yeah well I’m just not sure where your acerbic asking for a friend comment came from.
To be clear..... I pay full tax, am self employed, and since neither my 3 yr average or the last years profit was below 50k I qualify to receive precisely nothing in assistance. Not a penny.
So my initial comment was to point out that not all “self employed” have the option of dividends. The view shown by many of the comments on here seem to be that every “self employed” person somehow cooks the books and underpays their tax. Such a view is blinkered at best.
those Directors will mostly have paid themselves circa £9,000 as salary (pre-tax and NI) and the remainder as dividends/bonuses. It slightly tax efficient, and of course allows the director to take out what he feels the company can afford after perhaps shelling out on new equipment/vehicle etc, rather than committing to PAYE.
SO - any furlough payment he receives is based on that salary, and would probably be a monthly amount of £800 - Way short of the £2,500 limit.
If it is a small/single employee LtdCo - then it is quite likely the revenue stream has dried up, and it is actually a bone-fide claim. The only question is: Was it due to Covid, or was the LtdCo non-earning at the time anyway.
Our company earns all it's main income from outdoor events between April - October every year. In winter we invest our profits into the following years event season. Hence this lockdown could not have come at a worse time. Most shows are now cancelled for the rest of the year, mainly due to the fact that the organisers cannot justify risking more money, when 1, we don't know when the lockdown will cease and 2, presumably there will be another lockdown a couple weeks after this one ends.
Thus we have in all likelihood lost our entire income for 18 months, October 2019 - April 2021. Whilst despite making huge investments this winter, we do have some cash in the business, even looking back now I don't think we really could have ever justified holding 18 months worth of funds in cash.... could we? Obviously if this had happened back in October 2019 we could have made the decisions to have then easily sat through the next 18 months without a care in the world.
Just to clarify, we pay ourselves a very small paye amount (mine is very small due to a pension payment I receive), we then judge how profitable our year has been, how much we want to invest and then take a dividend. Lots and lots of tax is paid and obviously collected FOC for HMRC (VAT). We will of course get next to nothing in return.
Many business will be able to return to normal life, just as soon as the lockdown is over, it is a very different story for us. Life is a b..ch and then you.....
Chin up everyone
All us sold director 1man band ltd company’s haven’t been doing anything wrong in paying our selves dividends as opposed to paye
In fact I was advised to do this years ago when I set up by my accountant
Yes we all pay taxes in different forms just like sole traders and paye workers
Seems a little unfair imo we are not getting any financial help
Do you think this will change over the next few weeks ? Hope it does
The Government are helping with peoples wages/salary. Dividends are an income on investment, that's the difference.
It might be fairer to look at people's total income and how it might have fallen but unfortunately some will always be worse off than others.
It won’t change as business owners are seen as an easy target mortgage holidays have always been available if you have assets you only qualify for interest bearing loans we are too big for any rate relief oh and on the 25th I will have to pay my staff furloughed wages of around £100k which I know I can claim (thank god)but I still have to find it to pay
Like many one man band Ltd co’s they are used to to top up the basic salary to that of a ‘normal’ salary they also enable you to easily leave money in the business which is something I do as I only really take what I need to keep the bills and mortgage paid etc.
A lot of people think Ltd is some huge tax avoidance scheme, it’s not, I only went Ltd as a lot of the agency clients would not let you invoice as a sole trader and insisted on paying Ltd co’s only (this for short 1-5 day jobs not IT type long contracts)
If I furlough myself I get £550 odd a month but can do no active work/promotion for my business so it makes sense to try and scrape by picking up the odd day here and there on editing work.
If I had stayed self employed I would receive more than double that.
There are literally millions in the same situation.
The last few posts are very true as to where I was sitting as a Ltd company, sole director.
Luckily I missed being part of a team vs the hired help, so decided to return to PAYE in a similar but transferable industry. With IR35 changes and now this, I am ever so glad that it happened when it did. I genuinely feel for all of you where the main earnings was through dividend; tax savings are not as big as the PAYE guys seem to think they are, and written off entirely after holidays / sick pay / pensions etc.
I hope you all manage to receive something that you are fairly entitled to, the amount you have given HMRC over the years should surely count for something in helping to subsidise living in these uncertain times. Fingers crossed, good luck & stay safe folks.
I’ve been self employed for 17 years.
The first 15 as a limited company and the last 2 as a sole trader.
When I was a limited company I took minimum salary and dividends.
I changed to a sole trader because the tax advantages of the LTD set up were so marginal, once I had paid all the professional fees it was financially neutral and seems more hassle than being a sole trader.
Anyone who thinks a limited company director being paid through dividends is making huge tax savings is poorly informed. The benefit has been eroded over the years and is now minimal.
I guess the government has drawn arbitrary lines in a hurry and has probably assumed, wrongly, that all directors are rich and as such can fund themselves through this crisis. Seems they have little interest in the problems of private landlord too.
Wasn't the idea of furlough to help people who would be in real trouble, as in struggle to put food on the table etc.
What is it? A max of £1800 per month for 3 months pre tax?
That's one watch to a lot of people on here.
I think the issue is the government has put this in place and they have restrictions purely because everyone will claim, not because they need the money just because they can.
This is not a dig to anyone on here. Just from conversation I had with my friend (accountant). The questions he got when this kicked off was How much can I claim? What am I entitled to? A lot of these people still operating as normal.
People's greed has affected people who truly needed the money to feed their family.
Doing nothing and letting people apply for Universal Credit might have been better.
'How can anyone survive on £94/week SSP?' people complained. Well, people have been having to do that for years before CV. Difference is, some previously better off folk might have to rely on stuff like that.
Last edited by Kingstepper; 11th April 2020 at 21:52.