Market salary for book keeping

**SueEllen** · 21 September 2015, 17:23

Is she a director or the company secretary of the company?

If she is pay her up to the tax free allowance as she has other legal responsibilities.

If she isn't national minimum wage x average number of hours she works a week.

BTW the other director or the company secretary doesn't have to be a shareholder.

**northernladuk** · 21 September 2015, 17:24

Originally posted by Rihsabramo View Post

Hi,

My wife does all my book keeping, invoicing, filing, arranging travel etc.

What salary can I pay her? Can I pay up to the tax free allowance or is thàt too much?

Surely you can work out how many hours she will be doing and do some calculations based on that. How should we know how much she work she intends to do? That said paying her up to the tax free allowance is manipulating the situation to avoid tax not paying market rates for an agreed amount of work. For that amount you could have someone nearly full time and I am sure she isn't going to spend that much time.

Going out to market you are looking at £10-12 an hour. Work out how many hours filing a couple of receipts takes and there you go. £400 is about an hour a day to hour and half a day which doesn't sound to bad.

**WordIsBond** · 21 September 2015, 17:52

Originally posted by SueEllen View Post

Is she a director or the company secretary of the company?

If she is pay her up to the tax free allowance as she has other legal responsibilities.

This, definitely. And after Arctic Systems, no way HMRC challenges an £8K salary for a wife as a company director.

If she isn't a director, I'd ask several local accountants what they charge for bookkeeping services for a one man band like you. Then top it up some for the convenience of having her right there -- what would they charge if you wanted their bookkeeping services on site whenever you wanted them? Perhaps a little more.

So pay a little more than they'd charge.

Does she sign cheques for you, too? If not, get her name on the account so she can, and you can justify more -- she's taking the legal responsibility of disbursing funds. (Hope you trust her or you've got bigger problems than how much to pay her.) Bump it up some to reflect the extra responsibility.

If she doesn't have other income, I think there is a compelling ethical argument to be made that, if you are in a position to do it, you should be paying your wife enough to get a qualifying year for state pension eligibility. So find enough responsibilities for her to justify that, even if it means you have to make her a director. If you have children under 12 and she is getting child benefit, that's not an issue.

**Rihsabramo** · 21 September 2015, 19:14

Thanks, she is a director but not sure if I made my new accountant aware of that. Thanks for all your help!

Market salary for book keeping