I was going to comment about this the other day and then wasn't sure if I should!
So she filed a set of
micro accounts for the year to 31 March 2019 v late (she was in danger of being struck off). At that point there was £15,995 of cash in the business bank account. She had a tax bill (amounts owed are shown in brackets) of £28,014. This is likely to be the corporation tax owed for that year as it's always paid in arrears.
What that means is that she had insufficient funds in her company bank account for that tax year to pay her tax bill, and will be relying on income from the 2019/20 year to pay it.
I am also a freelancer and I was always taught: 1. Do not take out more from your business bank account than the tax owed because 2. If you have no income (or reduced income the following year) you may not have enough money to pay the tax bill as you still have to pay corporation tax on income from that year as well. This is how people end up going bankrupt when their income drops dramatically in subsequent years and they have spent the money that should be put aside to pay HMRC.
So essentially she's going to be in a cycle of robbing Peter to pay Paul - hence I think the realisation that she needs to cut down.
It's technically fine to run your business account this way as long as times are always good. But clearly she's had no income of any significance since Hellmans. This is why I don't do this because I couldn't sleep at night.
The other thing of interest is the amount of the tax bill. Corporation tax is 19% and is owed on your profits after expenses. At a v rough estimate that means there was a turnover in the business year to 31 March 2019 of approx £147k. We'll ignore VAT as it's paid quarterly and pretty much goes in and out (so is overall usually neutral in a micro company).
We can also see that at the point the accounts were made up, only £16k is held as cash at the bank, therefore approx £131k has been taken out of the business account that year. We know there is an assistant on the books as there are 2 employees shown on the accounts. Let's say including tax and NI the assistant has cost £25k to the business.
That leaves a v generous approximation of £106k that will have gone to Jack in that business year.
Tax will also be owed on that via a personal tax return for the dividends or PAYE (however it's been taken out - there's v little difference these days in the overall tax due). If, as she states, she is only paying herself a living wage, then the rest has been put somewhere in her personal bank accounts, as it's not showing on the company bank account.
Obviously I can only comment on what's on the tax return for that year - there is another set of accounts due for the year to March 2020 and it will be interesting to see those when they appear.
I hope this is helpful - I don't remember anyone commenting in this much detail about the accounts at the time they became available. I'm not an accountant but I also run my own business (triangulate me if you dare) and I also file micro accounts, so they're easy for me to read.
I'll now fuck off as I'm BUSY today.
he said it looked like a bog. Apt!
