Am I entitled to maternity allowance? Director of ltd company.

[evertonmint]

I am sole director of a limited company. I am a management consultant so earn a very high daily rate, and choose to work infrequently so I can spend lots of time with my children and then spread my earnings out by paying myself a small monthly salary every month.

I am 24 weeks pregnant. I have worked one contract while pregnant. It's for a piece of work rather than set number of days/weeks. I will have worked 22 days in an 8-9 week period. The money I will have earned covers my salary for a while year.

Am I entitled to claim maternity allowance? I know it is based on weeks worked but I actually pay myself for 52 weeks a year, it's just that the work is infrequent. Also I could do my work as 20 days, one day a week which would give me 20 weeks but choose to do it in a compressed period.

Just wondered if I'm able to claim or not.

You are entitled to SMP which your limited company will pay and reclaim from HMRC.

Yes I got SMP from my own company when I had DS2. My accountant just sorted it all out for me, including arranging for HMRC to provide upfront funding for the SMP to the business which was extremely helpful given I was the only fee earner and was not..er..earning fees!

Thanks. I'll get my accountant on it! Didn't even think about him sorting it out for me (still a novice at this!)

If in doubt, get your accountant to sort it out, that's my motto...