Limited company owners - know anything about NI contributions?

[furrycat]

We pa ourselves a small wage - £450 a month - and take the rest in dividends. We don't pay tax or NI on the wages. I asked our accountant how this affects our state pension and they said we were fine - but how can we be if we arent contributing NI?

thanks

£450 a month is above the level which counts for the benefits you get from payign NI contributions (pension, SMP etc), but not high enough to trigger payemnts. I have a client who does this, who also stresses about her pension etc, but it's perfectly fine. There's a page on the HMRC website which shows the levels at whcih NI payments need ot be made, whcih I can't find at the moment.
But, yes, it's fine, you're treated as though you are making payments.

This is one of the "benefits" of runnign a limited company btw, as you get your full tax free allowance, and then the rest of your income is taxed as dividend which will usually be less than if all of it was salary. And if it all was dividend, you wouldn't get your tax free allowance, as all dividend is taxed.

ditto shrinkingviolet.
By paying yourself an amount in this band (between where NI starts being counted for stamp and the level at which you start paying) you are being attributed with contibutions - and even better they are treated as based on approx £12,000 earnings.

You need to ensure that the company makes a PAYE return each year (even though the amounts are below the levels) so that your contributions records are updated (and I think this is the last year, but if you file online there are incentive payments, we have had a number of clients using the strategy you outline, who have filed online over the life of the incentive and, at no cost to themselves (other than our fees ) have received incentive payments of getting on for £1k).

You can only do it if you are directors and don't have a service contract - otherwise there are national minimum wage implications.

jj your DP is self employed. If you are self employed you pay £2.30 a week 'Class 2' contributions (unless you have a small earnings exemption certificate) - £2.20 was last year's rate. Furrycat and her DP are employed by a company (see the thread title 'limited company owners') which means that NI is totally different for them.

Furrycat, I think you should check your position re. the state pension. It is normal for people in your position to pay just OVER the NI threshold - say £460 a month. That will make sure you don't miss out on your NI record for the state pension, and you only have to pay a tiny amount of NI and tax.

To get the full basic state pension you have to have 30 years of NI paid or credited (assuming you aren't going to retire in the next couple of years). But until recently, men needed 44 years, and you cannot be sure what changes will be made to the rules in future.

So my advice would be: avoid gaps.

just jules - if he owns the company and takes a wage then he isn't self employed. Unles he also has a self employment?

self employed - you work for yourself, you are taxed on all your profits (income less allowable expenses). You might (or might now) employ other staff.

company - the company is a separate legal entity. The owner (who will also be a director) works for the company and the company pays them a salary (or not - see point earlier re director / no contract and national minimum wage). The profits (income less expenses - including salary but NOT dividend) are company profits and are subject to corporation tax. Any left over profits can be taken by the owners (shareholders) as dividend - which will then be taxed on them (at a rate dependant on their total other income).

Presumably your dh has an accountant? Get them to explain what records you need to keep.

in which case he should not be paying self employed NI - which is what the £2.20 you mentioned sounds like. Presumably the accountant know what is going on - they should pull their finger out.

You don't need to do much - but some simple record keeping should save both time and money at the year end.

The director of a limited company is not self-employed, he is employed by the company.

When NI becomes due it is payable firstly by him as Class 1 employee's contributions and also by the company as employer's contributions. ShrinkingViolet is right that there is a certain amount you can earn where you get the benefit of NI contributions without having to pay them, but I don't know offhand what that is right now.

Depending on what the company does, it may be classed as a service company and therefore come under the IR35 regulations. This means that tax and NIs are due on almost all the company's income, whether or not the director/secretary receive it as salary. This is because the Government classes them as "hidden" employees of the person they are providing services to.

I used to be a company secretary to my DH.

he should not be paying £2.20 a week.

IR35 is quite complex, his accountant will advise him on it (although having more than one source of income is not a guarantee that he isn't IR35, but 3 income streams is good ).

EVEN if he was IR35 he is still taking a salary (and the company would have to pay IR35 tax), he would not be self-employed and does not have to pay self-employed NI.

But seriously, your accountant should sort all this out, copies of any tax related paperwork should go straight to the accountant.

don't know where the 3 income streams came from!
And he has more than one company? Do you mean his company has income from more than one source, or that your dh has more than one company/source of income.

right, if it is complicated I'll butt out - I don't know the full picture. Have to say though, more than one company just sounds odd - for lots of reasons (more admin, more costs, lowers the company tax limits which can cause problems, VAT avoidance?)
Hope he has a decent accountant.

chasingsquirrels are you an accountant? i need one so badly!!