Because they haven’t planned a structured payroll strategy, they are a) paying more tax than they need to and b) risking getting themselves into a tangle with HMRC.

If this sounds like you, you need to focus on structuring your remuneration in a planned way – implementing payroll on a regular basis to utilise your personal tax free allowance, and structuring your dividends so you know you’ve correctly attributed dividend income on top of salary.

Having a payroll strategy will make sure that you:

How a payroll strategy can save you money

If you’re the owner of a limited company, you’ll know that dividends are a tax efficient way of remunerating yourself, but because they’re paid from a company after corporation tax has been deducted, and because no tax-free allowance applies to corporation tax – as soon as you start to make profit, you’ll start to pay tax. This means that if you wanted to earn your tax-free annual allowance of £10k and pay yourself through dividends, your company will have to make £12.5k profit in order to pay you £10k in dividends.  If instead you were to use a payroll mechanism and pay yourself a salary,  because it’s tax deductible to the company, paying you £10k salary could cost the company as little as £10k (exactly how much depends on how many people you employ and the annual employment allowance).

In summary then, by paying a salary for your tax-free allowance rather than a dividend, you will save up to £2.5k in corporation tax –  per director owner, per year – because instead of having to make a £12.5k profit to pay  a £10k dividend, you now only need to make a £10k profit to pay a £10k salary!

What if there’s no profit?

Of course, this might well be the case if you’re a new start up, but your personal tax free allowance can’t be carried forward from one tax year to another. You can still set up your payroll in the current year though – in the expectation that the business will make a profit in future tax years. The way you’d operate this would be to lend your company money to pay yourself your salary – and the company will repay this loan to you as soon as there are sufficient funds in the business. Funds lent by directors to their company are generally lent and repaid tax free , so you’re not storing up a future tax liability, you’re actually generating a future tax saving! If you want to do this though, you have to action it before the end of the tax year.

Is your limited company less than 1 year old?

Actioning payroll planning is especially important if you’ve set up your limited company during the 2014/15 tax year. If you came out of employment and had already earned at least £10k prior to leaving, you’ll already have used up your personal allowance, so there will be no benefit in setting up payroll in the 2014/15 tax year, but getting your strategy in place now will mean you’re ready to take advantage of your new tax allowance which kicks in on 6th April – and make sure you’re earnings are as tax efficient as possible for the remainder of your first business year.

By employing them and paying them through a payroll system, you can keep the tax allowance within the household, and remunerate them for their work.

If you’re a company director without a payroll strategy, if you’ve set up a limited company within the last 12 months, or if you’re a sole trader with a spouse or partner doing unpaid work for you, we’d love to speak with you and tell you how we can plan, set up and manage your payroll – and save you money!