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Cms with limited company

 
 Silo
(@silo)
New Member Registered

Hi Everybody hope your all keeping well ?

im new to this group so hoping for some good assistance for my situation.

firstly il tell my story in brief,

seperated from my ex about 10 years ago, 3 young kiddies too which I have over night for 1 day every wk end . I help with school uniforms and clothes etc when needed.

ive always worked and paid for the little ones and paying her our agreed amount every month by standing order.I’m now happily married of 5 years and I have my own company for around 2.5 years now.

my ex all of a sudden has applied to cms. I have the usual forms stating I have 14 days to clarify the information they hold from hmrc of which my accountant has submitted.

it is a limited company and I have a 50/50 business partner and we are both directors. So our salary is £12500 approximately per annum.

we also then pay ourselves dividends depending how things go obviously and what expenditures are needed to run the business throughout the year

the form is showing my £12500 only,,,

I also have 37k in dividends last year as we did ok,,

as this was last year ie, my self assessment had to be in by 31/1/ 21 

obviously I don’t have a crystal ball and can see how well this year will be!!

we are only in the second month of this financial , They are saying my payments will roughly be £198 per month just going on my £12500 threshold salary which is about half of what I’ve been paying for years which we agreed ourselves.

 

So basically she is just trying to get more money out of me , if she applies for a variation or can they use my last year’s dividends even though the claim has just been made 7/5/21,

surely this can’t be correct as that money in dividends has now been spent as my earnings for last year,

Sorry for the long post guys and appreciate any help.

pls feel free to comment if you can help me.

 

Quote
Topic starter Posted : 08/05/2021 12:17 pm
 Yoda
(@yoda)
Famed Member

Hi I'm not very up on CMS calculations I'm afraid, one of our other moderators or members are likely to know more. 

It's likely at some point, your dividends will be taken in to account in the CMS calculations from the information I can read on their website. 

Have you spoken to CMS or Child Maintenance Options to confirm this? 

ReplyQuote
Posted : 09/05/2021 11:54 am
(@mike-small)
Eminent Member Registered
Posted by: @yoda

Hi I'm not very up on CMS calculations I'm afraid, one of our other moderators or members are likely to know more. 

It's likely at some point, your dividends will be taken in to account in the CMS calculations from the information I can read on their website. 

Have you spoken to CMS or Child Maintenance Options to confirm this? 

Never call CMS Options, they are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard!! They cannot and will not advise on anything financial related. They can only advise on the most basic things.

I'm interested to know the source of the information you have found re dividends being taken into account on their website?

All I have found relates to unearned income, which is not taken into consideration unless the other parent (with care) raises a variation to open an investigation for them to include the dividends. This would mean, your ex knows all your financials and you will never be able to disguise this from them as whenever a calculation is done and they challenge it, then they will look into other earnings. Therefore, it's probably better to either agree an FBA or just disclose your dividend earnings at the end of each tax year.

 

ReplyQuote
Posted : 16/06/2021 11:01 am
(@mike-small)
Eminent Member Registered
Posted by: @silo

Hi Everybody hope your all keeping well ?

im new to this group so hoping for some good assistance for my situation.

firstly il tell my story in brief,

seperated from my ex about 10 years ago, 3 young kiddies too which I have over night for 1 day every wk end . I help with school uniforms and clothes etc when needed.

ive always worked and paid for the little ones and paying her our agreed amount every month by standing order.I’m now happily married of 5 years and I have my own company for around 2.5 years now.

my ex all of a sudden has applied to cms. I have the usual forms stating I have 14 days to clarify the information they hold from hmrc of which my accountant has submitted.

it is a limited company and I have a 50/50 business partner and we are both directors. So our salary is £12500 approximately per annum.

we also then pay ourselves dividends depending how things go obviously and what expenditures are needed to run the business throughout the year

the form is showing my £12500 only,,,

I also have 37k in dividends last year as we did ok,,

as this was last year ie, my self assessment had to be in by 31/1/ 21 

obviously I don’t have a crystal ball and can see how well this year will be!!

we are only in the second month of this financial , They are saying my payments will roughly be £198 per month just going on my £12500 threshold salary which is about half of what I’ve been paying for years which we agreed ourselves.

 

So basically she is just trying to get more money out of me , if she applies for a variation or can they use my last year’s dividends even though the claim has just been made 7/5/21,

surely this can’t be correct as that money in dividends has now been spent as my earnings for last year,

Sorry for the long post guys and appreciate any help.

pls feel free to comment if you can help me.

 

If your ex knows your business i.e. that you are operating via a LTD and knows you're not disclosing the right amount of earnings, then you're stumped I'm afraid. The only way you avoid this is if they are not aware of your financial situation.

I disclose dividends on my Tax Return every year and have advised them in the past that they should be included in their calculation (as I wasn't drawing a lot out of the company at the time) and they still did not take it into consideration. I then started to draw bigger amounts and again they still didn't factor them in (only looking at the measly salary I was drawing of 8k). 

As you have pointed out, this will be a continual case of every year they will write to her and she will challenge then you will pay more. The only thing this does is kick the can down the road for another year but it eventually catches up with you.

ReplyQuote
Posted : 16/06/2021 11:07 am
(@bill337)
Illustrious Member

hi,

because dividends is amount your withdrawing from the company, then CMS class that as income. if you don't declare it to them, but if your ex is clued up and bugs CMS about it, then it could come back to bite you.

ReplyQuote
Posted : 16/06/2021 5:53 pm
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