On the bench - keep warchest to pay salary or splunk it all on dividendand claim JSA?

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Perhaps you're correct. But I'm surprised that if you have say £100k in the Ltd account, you can so separate the same individual's Director and employee roles to say that you haven't deliberately made yourself unemployed. It's a bit sad really. I support the welfare state as a safety net, but I guess there are ways of dodging around the small print. It rankles a little because we want the considerable benefits of incorporation when it comes to tax, but can wriggle out of the responsibilities of being a director / employee to get round the JSA system. Still, worse things happen at sea.

If everybody paid their fair share of tax (15-20% of the net income for every person in this state) the economy would be fine, everybody would be better off, the poor would be richer and the richer would still be very rich.....

[kal]

If everybody paid their fair share of tax (15-20% of the net income for every person in this state) the economy would be fine, everybody would be better off, the poor would be richer and the richer would still be very rich.....

I take it you include the likes of Starbucks, Amazon and Google in that statement as well

[doodab]

If everybody paid their fair share of tax (15-20% of the net income for every person in this state) the economy would be fine, everybody would be better off, the poor would be richer and the richer would still be very rich.....

It's more like 40%.

[Old Greg]

It's more like 40%.

It depends how much is taken from corporate tax paying entities, but broadly you are correct, I suspect.

[psychocandy]

Have you not still deliberately given up employment - assuming there is money in the Ltd? Do people say to the Job Centre 'I've got 50k in the Ltd but no work coming in so I've laid myself off'?

And presumably your job seeking activities on JSA would be for yourself, not business seeking activities for your Ltd, because that would be working for your Ltd and you're not working? How does that pan out?

Massive grey area like I said.

[psychocandy]

I haven't looked into it at any depth.
Do manufacturing companies who lay people off only do so after emptying their bank account, or when they realise they have no work for their employees to actually do?
As for work seeking - I think the general rule for those laid off is that you seek work for yourself, and in the meantime your company should be looking for orders (contracts) so that they can call you back into work. In our cases, that would mean you should be seeking any type of work (not just contracts), and then separately your Ltd (you as director) should be seeking contracts to send you in on as the representative. Whether this is how the Job Centre sees things, or whether they think you're OK only looking for contract work, I don't know.

Its up to your personal advisor to be honest. In my case, they were happy for me to crack on with just looking for contracts.

Probably after some time though that may have changed.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

I take it you include the likes of Starbucks, Amazon and Google in that statement as well

If all citizens and corps paid a fair amount (rather than all these tiered amounts between 20-50%) then overall we would be far better off IMO. I don't feel it is justified to tax somebody 40% let alone 50% no matter how much they earn.....

[kal]

If all citizens and corps paid a fair amount (rather than all these tiered amounts between 20-50%) then overall we would be far better off IMO. I don't feel it is justified to tax somebody 40% let alone 50% no matter how much they earn.....

Agreed, I see that the top rate was 60% before thatcher got in and reduced it, that really was taking the p!ss...

[Old Greg]

Agreed, I see that the top rate was 60% before thatcher got in and reduced it, that really was taking the p!ss...

In 1971 the top rate of income tax on earned income was cut to 75%. A surcharge of 15% kept the top rate on investment income at 90%.In 1974 the cut was partly reversed and the top rate on earned income was raised to 83%. With the investment income surcharge this raised the top rate on investment income to 98%, the highest permanent rate since the war. This applied to incomes over £20,000 (£176,477 as of 2014),[5]. In 1974 750,000 people were liable to pay the top-rate of income tax.[13]
Margaret Thatcher, who favoured indirect taxation, reduced personal income tax rates during the 1980s.[14] In the first budget after her election victory in 1979, the top rate was reduced from 83% to 60% and the basic rate from 33% to 30%.[15] The basic rate was also cut for three successive budgets - to 29% in the 1986 budget, 27% in 1987 and to 25% in 1988.[16] The top rate of income tax was cut to 40% in the 1988 budget. The investment income surcharge was abolished in 1985.

History of taxation in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[doodab]

I've always thought of shares in myco as similar to shares in any other business. If i had 100k in bt shares say, that would rule out claiming benefits. Ditto if myco's net asset value is hugely positive.

If you're genuinely struggling then by all means claim jsa, but doing it when you have sizeable amount of cash in the business seems dubious to me, and doing it when you have no intention of taking even suitable work as the other bloke advised is reprehensible.