Hi all,
My (non-British) partner and I want to apply for a spouse visa as soon as possible.
I am the sole director (and shareholder) of my own limited company and also it's own employee.
I make more than £18,600 per year; however, I am worried about the way I pay myself via the company.
From what I read in the requirements (and on forums), the Home Office will expect payslip (salary) and dividend voucher information to match actual payments going from the business account to the personal account (fair enough!).
The problem is, and I suspect may sole traders will a low-ish income do this, I pretty much pay myself every time a client pays the company (after retaining a % for tax). Therefore, all payments are rather ad-hoc (e.g. one month it might be a single payment of £2,500, the next month could be six smaller payments several days apart, month 3 could be zero income and month 4 could be x £2,000 payments, something like that).
At the end of the tax year, my account just tallies it all up and issues one dividend payment. The dividend will be whatever is left after my "on-paper" salary is deducted (my PAYE is around £671 per month).
HMRC doesn't care because I pay my tax either way.
So, if you add up all my random-looking incoming payments on my personal bank account (easily 50-100 transactions), then this will tally up to the same amount as the sum of 12 x £671 monthly salaries plus the yearly dividend.
Whilst I can certainly (or rather my accountant) provide a breakdown of how each transaction, once added together, ultimately matches my payslip/dividend package (to the penny hopefully), it is a very messy situation and I worry how the Home Office will look at this. I'd read about people being worried about far less serious matters (e.g. a payment arriving 2 days after the date on a payslip, etc).
I could of course (as the tax year is not yet over) retrospectively issue backdated dividend vouchers for a lot of these small transactions, but that still leaves an issue with the salary amounts.
Has anyone had personal experience with this?
Also (second question), if I were to apply (with a thorough explanation/breakdown), and the application were to be refused, would this hinder my partner's chances if she applies again in 12 months time which gives me time to "sort out" the account for 12 months even though from a cash flow perspective it is difficult (how do other people manage to pay themselves regularly for irregular income?)
All the best and thank you!
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