Worth mentioning the personal tax treatment on withdrawals in the latter part of a company's life should be based on facts, not personal preference.
Eg:
- your company has ceased trading,
- you then work out numbers and realise it has £26k final net assets,
- you take £2k today deeming it to be dividend,
- you take £24k tomorrow deeming it to be final capital receipt.
Ok so HMRC may well never look at it, but if they did, you'd struggle to justify this. The split of the withdrawals is very artificial, and they'd easily win the argument that this should be £26k taken out as final funds post cessation. Hence assuming you didn't liquidate, you'd have it all taxed on you as dividends, whereas what you likely wanted was £2k dividends, £24k CGT.
Relating this to the OP, has the company clearly ceased trading? And ideally the last dividend was taken some time earlier? If so, I don't think there's any issue here.
Key thing is so any third party looking at it can clearly distinguish between what was dividends taken whilst trading, and what was final funds being withdrawn as part of closure. The more these are blurred, the more risk of some you want to be treated one way being argued should be treated another.
Eg:
- your company has ceased trading,
- you then work out numbers and realise it has £26k final net assets,
- you take £2k today deeming it to be dividend,
- you take £24k tomorrow deeming it to be final capital receipt.
Ok so HMRC may well never look at it, but if they did, you'd struggle to justify this. The split of the withdrawals is very artificial, and they'd easily win the argument that this should be £26k taken out as final funds post cessation. Hence assuming you didn't liquidate, you'd have it all taxed on you as dividends, whereas what you likely wanted was £2k dividends, £24k CGT.
Relating this to the OP, has the company clearly ceased trading? And ideally the last dividend was taken some time earlier? If so, I don't think there's any issue here.
Key thing is so any third party looking at it can clearly distinguish between what was dividends taken whilst trading, and what was final funds being withdrawn as part of closure. The more these are blurred, the more risk of some you want to be treated one way being argued should be treated another.
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