I’m currently a freelance/contract IT BA, which I do through my ltd company (where I’m the sole shareholder, director and employee)

The other half is thinking of contracting too, doing general PM/PMO type stuff. What are the advantages/disadvantages of her doing it through my present company?

Things that I need to think about off the top of my head –

– Companies House shenanigans (sorting out another share for her so she can have dividends, adding her as another director)
– VAT classification? I’m flat rate at the mo, would the flat rate for her stuff be the same as for my stuff?
– NI/payroll (accountants can sort out)
– Some kind of contract between us as co-directors (we’re not married if that makes any difference)?

Anything else I need to consider?

*cough*

my understanding is it would be of benefit from an ir35 point of view as you automatically have income from multiple clients at the same time etc

you would also benefit from only having the overhead of one company to run betwteen you.

could be a nightmare to unpick if it goes pete tong between you though.

IR35 can only benefit.

Flat rate shouldn’t be affected, presuming that she’ll be doing PM/PMO for IT type people.

Marriage is completely irrelevant – it will be down to who owns what shares in the company. If it gets dissolved, that will be the lines along which it is split. Voting of dividends also goes along these lines.

Can put you in touch with my accountant (‘nam based biker, so you probably already know him!) for a chat. He knows stuff that I try not to clutter my head with 🙂

Dave

Just marry her ? And leave everything else as is 🙂

Yeah, I assumed the IR35 end of it would be good.

I’ll be pestering my accountants for their take on it, I just wondered what advice a load of internet strangers could offer me 🙂

internet strangers

how very dare you!?

Assuming you’re taking the bulk of income as dividends you’ll get them proportional to your relative share holding (so if you don’t want to pay a 50/50 split you’ll need to adjust your shareholding to match).

You can do dividend waivers though, so one of you could forego some or all of your dividend.

Just marry her ?

Quiet you

how very dare you!?

Not you, I know you’re real 🙂

Possibly a naive answer, but I always thought the main reason couples shared the same company was to fiddle the income tax thresholds.
For example say the Man would earn 40K and the woman only does part time and earns 15K, they’d pay less tax if they split it and “earned” 27.5K each.

For example say the Man would earn 40K and the woman only does part time and earns 15K, they’d pay less tax if they split it and “earned” 27.5K each.

yeah, but if the household income is larger than 90k (the two lower rate tax brackets combined) then there is no benefit to doing this anyway. Having more companies wouldn’t help.

That doesn’t really apply here, as we’d both be ‘earning’ about the same amount for the single company, and paying ourselves about (well, probably exactly) the same amount from it, as if we had a separate company each.

The savings, I think, are more in the way of overheads/hassle.