Spouse (family) visa, Company Director: ad-hoc payments from business account

[ggc]

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!

[ggc]

P.S. I suppose I could call all these individual transaction "advances" which I suspect they are, but that's ultimately all academic ...

[TODMATT]

See Appendix FM-SE

"c) Where the person is either listed as a director of the company, or is an employee of the company, or both, and receives a salary from the company, all of the following documents must also be provided:
(i) Payslips and P60 (if issued) covering the same period as the Company Tax Return CT600.
(ii) Personal bank statements covering the same 12-month period as the Company Tax Return CT600 showing that the salary as a director or employee of the company (or both) was paid into an account in the name of the person or in the name of the person and their partner jointly.
(d) Where the person receives dividends from the company, all of the following documents must also be provided:
(i) Dividend vouchers for all dividends declared in favour of the person during or in respect of the period covered by the Company Tax Return CT600 showing the company’s and the person’s details with the person’s net dividend amount.
(ii) Personal bank statement(s) showing that those dividends were paid into an account in the name of the person or in the name of the person and their partner jointly."

You need to provide payslips and dividends covering the CT600 so therefore personally i don't any issue here.

[ggc]

Hello,

It is indeed points C(ii) and D(ii) I struggle with.

I can provide bank statements, and the TOTALS will match (sum of all transactions over a year with matched combination/sum of all nominal PAYE payments and dividends), but not individual payments/transactions; in fact, the individual payments appear so random (on paper) that other than the total sum nothing seems to match. From what I have heard, this could be a problem, however, I have yet to hear back from anyone who has actually applied under similar circumstances.