Monthly Archives: August 2021

Hot Business News Today

Pension schemes

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By Peter Done on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs
How do we go about setting up a staff pension?
Since the introduction of auto-enrolment into pension schemes by the UK government, all employers must offer access to a pension scheme for eligible employees and make minimum contributions (currently 3 per cent) to it.
Pensions are complex, and you want to get it right. Getting expert advice on which scheme to choose is going to be important, a financial advisor will be able to help you with this.
Once you’ve identified the right scheme for you, you need to identify those you are going to offer access to it. The following employees are eligible:

Those between the age of 22 and the State Pension age
Earning at least £10,000 a year
Normally working in the UK

If you have employees who should already be in the scheme, speak to them about it and what you will be introducing – the pension provider will usually help you answer any of their questions.
>See also: Pensions auto enrolment guide for employers
Standard information for new starters should be available from the pensions provider to introduce them to the scheme you have selected, and you can get

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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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