As the 2020/21 tax year draws to an end, below I provide a few tips on things you may wish to consider to mitigate or avoid paying excessive tax.
Review your income levels and marginal tax rates
Assess if your taxable income for 2020/21 falls into a band that suffers from disproportionately high effective tax rates. You will need to estimate and add together all your income from all sources – dividends, interest income, employment, property, investment income, pensions and all other income.
If your income is above £50,000, the High Income Child Benefit Charge is applicable. You will also start paying tax at 40%.
If your income is above £100,000, the personal allowance is restricted and completely withdrawn over and above £125,000.
If your income is above £150,000, you will pay tax at 45%
High earners may consider taking a holiday, making additional pension contributions or gift aid contributions to reduce tax impact.
Income tax on savings
You may invest up to £20,000 into an ISA – cash, stocks and shares. Interest, dividend received and capital gains will be tax free.
Pensions
Annual allowance is £40,000.
This may be reduced where income exceeds £240,000 as the amount that can be saved is tapered.
Unused allowances can be brought forward from the previous three tax years.
Capital allowances
Consider bringing forward expenditure to pre-year end on assets qualifying for capital allowances to benefit from tax relief.
Limited company directors (owner managed businesses)
Consider extracting funds and paying yourself in the most tax-efficient way. You could optimise a few strategies as follows:
- Splitting income with a spouse or family members
- Having different classes of shares would enable different levels of dividends to be paid
- Maximise the dividends threshold – up to £2,000 is tax free and between £32,000 to £33,500 (approximately) is taxed at 7.5. Higher dividends will be taxed at 32.5%. The rate at which you will be taxed on dividends is subject to any other taxable income you may have received.
- Review the director loan accounts and consider s455 tax on outstanding balances.
Company car
Companies cars are subject to the car benefit and car fuel benefit charge. In order to reduce or avoid any addition income tax liability, consideration can be given to making capital contributions towards the value of the car as well as paying back the cost of fuel that is used privately (where fuel is provided by the employer).
If you would like to discuss issues arising from this article or to find out more on the applicable tax strategies, please contact Tobi Lab via email at hello@thetacuk.com.
You can book a personal tax consultation (£145) via http://bit.ly/tac-taxplanning