I have to complete a business survey form and one of the entry fields is PAYE reference.
I'm a self employed director of a limited company with no employees, so I'm not sure if I need a PAYE reference. I can't find any reference mentioned on any of my tax documentation. Can anyone confirm whether I need a PAYE reference and if so, where do I find it?
Thanks in advance.
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PAYE Registration
Hello,
Your company needs to register with HMRC for PAYE if it pays you a salary of £97 a week or more during 2010/11 or if you obtain benefits (i.e. car, fuel, private medical insurance, etc) from the company. Please see this link for further information: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/paye/intro/register.htm
After you register a PAYE reference number will be issued to you.
Best regards,
Gary
A self employed director!?
Surely a contradiction in terms. How/why did you set this up? On the advice of your accountant because it would save you tax, but not understanding what it all meant or how it works by the sounds of it.
How do you receive your income? From the company, and in what form? Salary, dividends, a mix of the two?
I would suggest that you probably do need a PAYE scheme and reference.
RE : PAYE question
I've never drawn a salary so far (in 15 months trading) but have paid myself quarterly dividends.
Does that make any difference?
Why would you do that?
Do you have another source of income, a pension or something? If so then you may well not have a PAYE scheme.
Again
Why did you set up, and have you proceeded this way? There would seem to be bits of the jigsaw missing and confusion of terms.
Presumably you took advice on setting up and proceeding in this fashion, in which case it would probably be best to refer back to the person that gave the original advice.
No pensions
I don't have any pension.
I was a sole trader but changed to ltd company after being advised I could make significant tax savings. Company dividends are my only source of income.
If your only income is from dividends ...
... then you are wasting your personal allowance (some wastage may be desirable, but certainly not all), when a modest salary would qualify for corporation tax relief.
Furthermore you are losing out on an opportunity to qualify for an enhanced state pension (assuming not contracted out, and even then you can contract back in), at essentially no cost.
To take advantage of these opportunities you would have to register a scheme.
What you are doing may be the right thing to do in the tax year in which your sole trade ceased and you incorporated.
One would hope that your adviser mentioned these points to you.
With kind regards
Clint Westwood
What advantage
would you hope to obtain from completing a survey?
If the answer is none, which is probably the case, why waste your time giving what may well amount to free info oir lead to being pestered by na salesman
legal requirement
It's the Busines Register and Employment Survey and I'm legally required to fill it in.
I think I'll leave the PAYE Reference field as the default (000/000000000) since I clearly don't have one at the moment. Even if I'm supposed to have one, I don't at time of writing, so I'm not being inaccurate.
If they need one later, and I eventually get one, I'll tell them.
what makes you think
its a legal requirement?
There are guys out there who purport to say you have to do certain things.
Which government department has issued this survey?
Office for National Statistics
The survey comes from the Office for National Statistics. On the form it says
"You are required by law to complete this questionnaire".
It also says "If you do not complete and return this questionnaire, penalties may be incurred."
I assume that all businesses have recieved this form. Are you telling me this isn't the case?
Not sure about this one
But most surveys conducted by ONS they sample a representative cross section of whichever part of commerce they want to do and extrapolate from the results. Woe betite you, though, if you are in a niche area; you get the lot!
Yes, ONS surveys can be a pain
I went through a period of a couple of years with one popping through the post nearly every month in my previous job (not in practice but as FC for a not for profit organisation). Sometimes they are straightforward and simple, sometimes they can take a fair amount of time to fill in.
Thankfully I don't seem to have come under their scrutiny for a couple of years now.
The trick is
ignore them and they stop coming.
In my experience of many years only one was pursued by phone, replied to in the phone call and paper ones ignored. They stopped after a few months.
If you do reply they willo keep coming on a monthly basis
Dividend-only income
Clint, the divided-only income was during the last tax year in which my sole trade ceased and I incorporated.
For this tax year, I'll be combining dividends with a small salary as you suggested, to use up my personal allowance.
Thanks for all the replies.
You can't just ignore proper ONS ones!!
I agree about ignoring marketing surveys and the like but it is a legal obligation to respond to the ONS ones. They chase by letter with lots of red writing if you do not reply. Not sure what happens after that as I've always responded, but I wouldn't advise ignoring them.