Monthly Archives: August 2021

Hot Business News Today

Paying dividends to directors

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By Toby Cotton on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs
Dividends are a great way to extract profits from a company to pay shareholders, including directors, and there can be many tax advantageous points to it. But with any extraction, proper procedures need to be in place to ensure they are legal and fair.
Many small company director/shareholders decide to take a mixture of salary and dividends making use of the basic rate band in order to reduce tax. This is usually done by taking salary up to the minimum before you pay National Insurance or PAYE, and then top up with dividends as the current rate is 7.5 per cent on dividends up to the basic rate band. Helpfully, the first £2,000 of dividends extracted individually is covered by the dividend allowance with no tax to pay.
>See also: Forming a company: Choose your trading type
Before any dividends are to be declared, they must be checked to the articles of association to ensure that the internal rules of the company are kept in terms of who can approve these dividends and their proportions. Dividends will be approved via a board meeting.
There are two different types of

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Hot Business News Today

Is an employee entitled to bereavement leave?

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By Peter Done on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs
If a person is on a zero hours contract, are they entitled to bereavement leave?
Statutory bereavement leave is available to employees, but only in limited circumstances. If your employee has a child who dies, under the age of 18, or who is stillborn, they can take up to two weeks bereavement leave within 56 weeks of the death. What a week would be for them would be based on their average working week (one, two, three days etc).
Bear in mind, not all zero-hours staff are employees. Some can be workers, who don’t get the same rights as employees. If they are a worker, and not an employee, this statutory right will not apply to them.
>See also: Calculating holiday allowances for part-time staff
In other circumstances, there are some limited rights to time off, especially where your employee has to make arrangements for the funeral, etc. Your contract may set out the rules for this, including if that is paid (there is nothing to say it has to be, unless you normally do so). Do you give paid bereavement leave normally?
Look at the terms of your contract

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