Payroll for director while off

[Sav2024]

Hi I’m about to go on maternity leave and have applied for smp. I am a director and the sole employee of a limited company.

do I process payroll as usual and put it through as Salary? My payroll software is asking if September is my last director payment for the tax year. October will be the first month of maternity pay.

can I also take dividends?

any advice for best way to take money out the business without going over tax thresholds etc?

I don’t want to do it wrong and be asked to pay back the maternity pay!

thanks in advance for any help ❤️

Help needed! 🫶🏻

I am in same boat but my accountant sorts everything for me… My first maternity I was paid my wage as usual each month and could take dividends. My SMP was then claimed back the following April.

Yes, you pay yourself through your payroll as normal. Whether you pay yourself your normal wage or just the SMP is entirely up to you. Your payroll software should work out the SMP (assuming you set up the dates etc right) so you can add extra gross if you want to bring you up to normal wage levels. The software will then make the repayment details to HMRC via the normal payroll RTI submissions. You need to contact HMRC directly to actually claim the SMP due back to the company, via the Govt Gateway account.

Yes, you can still pay dividends, subject to the company having adequate distributable post tax profit reserves.