Part own a company 50:50 but get paid by it as a freelancer via invoice

[NotAllThere]

First thought. If you're having this much difficulty with your partner at this stage, you've got to consider whether you've gone into business with the right person.

I don't understand the "too little to pay salary", but enough to pay a dividend?

I think the OP might consider salary to be a regular amount a month and operating PAYE. There's no reason for pay not to vary from month to month, including being zero for some months.

The OP could figure out with the partner a reasonable amount to cover the extra work he's doing. When the company has the sufficient funds and it's enough to make it worthwhile for the OP - pay out that amount, with tax and NI (ee and er) deducted and passed onto HMRC.

[murky]

First thought. If you're having this much difficulty with your partner at this stage, you've got to consider whether you've gone into business with the right person.

I think the OP might consider salary to be a regular amount a month and operating PAYE. There's no reason for pay not to vary from month to month, including being zero for some months.

Ah yes - it's not my sole income and the idea has been developed by us together over the years. It ran ok as two small businesses before this - I was the technical brains and he did the invoicing and had a contact or two - but plan is to expand it.

You 've hit the nail on the head re. salary - we both assumed it had to be a regular amount. Thank you immensely - that might be the solution.

[VectraMan]

I've invoiced a company I was a shareholder of (but not director of) from my contracting Ltd. I never thought there was any issue with doing this; assuming it's for a service rather than as a way of getting money out of the company then I can't see anything wrong.

The problem with doing it as salary is that you should really register for PAYE, which you probably don't want to do as a one off.

But really you should get things straight with your partner.