Take advantage of the £2000 employment allowance from 6th April.

The new £2,000 “employment allowance” that provides relief from paying employers NIC on the first £2,000 of contributions starts 6 April 2014. For many employers the benefit of the £2,000 relief will be obtained in month 1 by reducing employers NIC payable, for others it could take several months before credit for the £2,000 is obtained  on a cumulative basis.
This new relief appears to be available to most employers, including one man band companies, and leads us to consider a change of profit extraction strategy from 6 April 2014 as it will be more advantageous to increase directors’ salaries to £10,000 instead of the NIC threshold of £7,956.

 

The extra £2,044 will save £409 (20%) corporation tax (£818 for two directors) whereas the additional employees NIC would be just £245 each.

 

Husband and wife company – from 2014/15:

 

Salary –                             £9,755 net  = gross  £10,000

Dividend up to BR band  £28,678 net = gross £31,865

Top of BR band                                             £41,865

Net cash extracted (each) £38,433

Total extracted       £76,866

 

There would however be 20% corporation tax payable.

Profits before tax £71,695 @ 20% = £14,339 corporation tax, thus profits before salaries and tax would be  £91,695.

 

This results in an overall tax and NIC rate of just 16.2%.

 

A salary in excess of £10,000 would attract income tax (at  20%) and employee’s NIC at 12.2%.