Dividend vouchers and board meeting minutes - printed or electronic copies?

[Wanderer]

I'm trying to reduce the amount of paperwork I have kicking around in my company office. I normally print divi vouchers and board meeting minutes for each shareholder and sign them.

I always thought dividend vouchers had to be printed but HMRC's guidance seems to imply that they can be sent electronically. Taking the example of a close company with one director and two shareholders, what would you guys recommend?

Also. can I have a single page with the meeting minutes and divi voucher in the same document or are they required to be separate?

Multiple choice and votes are public...

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

There s some current HMRC guidance under their Self Assessment section saying you need to keep originals of dividend vouchers; clearly this contradicts the link you've given - you are welcome to email HMRC and tell them if you wish. Fairly painful process getting their web site corrected...

TBH I cannot see HMRC penalising anyone for not having originals, nor do I think it would have any impact on any enquiry / inspection.

WRT combining dividend voucher and minutes on the same page, again no issue IMV.

I appreciate that there are often firmly held views on dividend administration. Out of 2,500 clients over the last 20 years or so, I've only seen them requested once. IME they are not as big a issue as thought, although that doesn't mean they shouldn't be done.

YMMV

[northernladuk]

While I am always trying to save time and space, picking on the one thing that makes the difference between a proper dividend and an illegal one is worth a few pieces of paper in a folder for me I am afraid.

I see what Jessica is saying but in my world of low risk am happy to do the extra work/space on this one.

Another option would be to issue divis a lot less infrequently? Hopefully by next year I hope to do a single payment at the beginning of the year, stick it somewhere it will earn something and not have to worry about it again.

[captainham]

For the sake of a few bits of paper knocking around in a file, and bearing in mind contradictory advice on HMRC (shock horror!), I would go belt and braces and have paper copies and separate vouchers from minutes. Not going to save much time-wise by combining it IMO.

[Sockpuppet]

Electronic Copies can always be printed should they be needed, unless they plan to send the vouchers for carbon dating.

[psychocandy]

Not quite sure how HMRC would know it wasnt an original though. so you keep electronically - HMRC want to see the paper originals - print them out!!!!

[GillsMan]

Not quite sure how HMRC would know it wasnt an original though. so you keep electronically - HMRC want to see the paper originals - print them out!!!!

This tbh. I've got better things to do than managing endless and pointless bits of paper. All this documentation is electronic for me, and I'll print them out if and when they are requested. Frankly, I'm prepared to take the somewhat marginal risk of getting into trouble for not adhering to this.

I also don't think I have one hardcopy of an invoice - I think I've sent every single one via email. I've never deleted a sent email and have them all backed up so if I ever require an audit trail, I'll be able to provide it.

[jamesbrown]

Electronic Copies can always be printed should they be needed, unless they plan to send the vouchers for carbon dating.

Precisely

[lithium147]

I think that dividend guidance is on receiving a dividend only.
Receiving a dividend is only half the story. The other half is declaring the dividend.
So perhaps electronic dividend vouchers ok, but still need to have paper board meeting minutes.

Also, if one needs to sign these documents, then (unless you are using electronic signature) they need to be printed and signed, then scanned back in again. So if you do this, then you would have copies of these documents, so why not keep them?

[lithium147]

Electronic Copies can always be printed should they be needed, unless they plan to send the vouchers for carbon dating.

The originals could have been lost, so reprints were made. Therefore, carbon dating wouldn't help..