How you take money out of your own company is one of the few tax decisions you make every single year, and small changes in the rules can flip the answer. This guide brings together our explainers on the director's toolkit — the salary-versus-dividend balance, pension contributions, the traps around director's loans, and the benefits you can give yourself tax-free.
The efficient way to pay yourself is not fixed. National Insurance thresholds move, dividend rates change, and what worked last year may cost you this year. The pieces below are meant to be re-read each spring, not settled once and forgotten.
Setting the salary-and-dividend mix, using employer pension contributions, steering clear of the section 455 charge on director's loans, and the small benefits that are genuinely tax-free versus the ones that quietly create a bill. Each links to a focused explainer.
For most owner-managers of a UK limited company, a small salary combined with dividends remains the standard way to extract profit in 2026/27, because the…
Read the full article →Tax Strategy · 6 min readFor owner-managed company directors, an employer pension contribution is frequently the most efficient way to move profit out of the company: it carries…
Read the full article →Tax Strategy · 5 min readIf your company has lent you money and the loan is still outstanding nine months after your company's year-end, your company owes HMRC a section 455 CTA…
Read the full article →Compliance · 6 min readA plain-English guide for owner-managed companies to benefits in kind: what they are, how they are reported on form P11D and P11D(b) by 6 July, and the…
Read the full article →Expenses · 6 min readThe statutory trivial benefits exemption lets an employer provide a small benefit worth £50 or less with no income tax, no National Insurance and no P11D…
Read the full article →