Child Maintenance

[sean85]

Evening, hoping someone out there can help as the CMS keep giving me different answers!

I am the Company Director of a Ltd company. I advised the CMS of my annual earnings and estimated dividends for the year ahead. They calculated my child maintenance upon the basis of what my annual earnings are and excluded the estimated dividends from their calculations.\

My business has not yet operated for one financial year yet so they could not take data from the HMRC.

When the CMS do their annual review and review all the salary I received, plus all dividend payments taken over the year, will they suddenly tell me that I have a large backdated child maintenance bill to pay for the last financial year? (because they have worked out the difference between annual salary calculations and annual salary plus dividends received calculation).

My salary is set to the most efficient tax method and so if the CMS actually used my estimated dividend payments in year one then I should actually be paying more.

Worried I may get stung by the generally inefficient organisation that they are

[DodgyAccountant]

There are 3 different systems

1993
2003
2012

I have some experience with the 2003 version. In this, liablity will be calculated on salary. An additional liability on dividends will be calculated if requested by the PWC (parent with care - usually mother - father is apparently the parent without any care). You can also ask yourself for calculation to include dividend yourself. Sounds lke you have done this and it has been ignored - possibly because it is a projection rather than actual income.

You could contact NACSA https://www.nacsa.co.uk/
who will help and are a lot cheaper and probably better than a solicitor.

I suggest you comunicate only by post with the CSA and send it special / recorded delivery. They are totally unscruplulous. And fairly hopeless.

Regards

DA

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

If you cut cornflake boxes in 2, add some sellotape you can make shoes for your children also, also tell the ex wife about skips outside supermarkets for free food

To be fair the op doesn't appear to be attempting to weasel out of payment.

Can't you just agree to pay the higher amount by agreement with your ex?

[DodgyAccountant]

He has declared dividends when he was under no legal obligation to do so to try to stop problems in the future. Can't see how he could have done much more.

[ASB]

To be fair the op doesn't appear to be attempting to weasel out of payment.

Can't you just agree to pay the higher amount by agreement with your ex?

I'm not familiar with the current system, but voluntary payment have the potential to be hazardous.

I paid my ex wife 20% of my bonus. To be fair to her she said "No it's yours, keep it". I said "Well not really it's a substantial chunk of extra income".

Sometime after I was reassessed. So the CSA deemed I was short because of the bonus and I should make a top up payment. (Again to be fair she just returned it).

The point being that under the previous system any voluntary agreement simply got trumped by the CSA calculation.

[northernladuk]

I'm not familiar with the current system, but voluntary payment have the potential to be hazardous.

I paid my ex wife 20% of my bonus. To be fair to her she said "No it's yours, keep it". I said "Well not really it's a substantial chunk of extra income".

Sometime after I was reassessed. So the CSA deemed I was short because of the bonus and I should make a top up payment. (Again to be fair she just returned it).

The point being that under the previous system any voluntary agreement simply got trumped by the CSA calculation.

Which I assume wasn't really fair to either party and didn't help the situation one bit?

[ASB]

Which I assume wasn't really fair to either party and didn't help the situation one bit?

It complicated it a little. The problem really is that under that system irrespective of what one may have agreed jointly between everybody the PWC could always go to the CSA who would asess based on the rules, and these were a bit inflexible.

[sean85]

If you cut cornflake boxes in 2, add some sellotape you can make shoes for your children also, also tell the ex wife about skips outside supermarkets for free food

Not sure why you are being rude, if you had read my post correctly then you would actually have seen that I am being open and honest to the CMS about how much income i have. It is the CMS that are currently refusing to take my dividends into account for the calculation.

[sean85]

To be fair the op doesn't appear to be attempting to weasel out of payment.

Can't you just agree to pay the higher amount by agreement with your ex?

Ex refuses to discuss anything! Currently paying the extra each month. Don't want them to go without, but also don't want to be stung for an unexpected bill when I am already paying the difference.

[sean85]

I'm not familiar with the current system, but voluntary payment have the potential to be hazardous.

I paid my ex wife 20% of my bonus. To be fair to her she said "No it's yours, keep it". I said "Well not really it's a substantial chunk of extra income".

Sometime after I was reassessed. So the CSA deemed I was short because of the bonus and I should make a top up payment. (Again to be fair she just returned it).

The point being that under the previous system any voluntary agreement simply got trumped by the CSA calculation.

You have a very reasonable ex! Mine would rather see me living on the streets and in great agony than be reasonable! Some women become very bitter when you divorce them