Hi Kieran, I have sent you an email.

I don’t suppose you have any recommendations for an accountant for investments?

Well done Dominic! Taking action is 80% of the success :)

The Vanguard LS80 acc is a tricky one as it involves both dividends and non-dividend income from bonds. Depending on the investment platform, they may or may not report what the split is. Vanguard directly, for instance, sends a statement that says ~90% of the income is dividends (franked investment income, tax-free) and 10% is non-dividend income but which has 20% tax withheld already at source. Something to consider for the future, when you will be selling your fund. You’ll need to deduct the income part from the capital gains to reduce the corporation tax, as some of it is tax-free. This mess is why I typically recommend the Income (not the Accumulation) fund flavour for LTD company investors.

Hurrah!

But, a little confused on the accounting side and would welcome your thoughts – the statement from Vanguard references ‘income’ generated – is that bond interest (and therefore subject to corp tax this year) or dividends, and therefore exempt, with corp tax due as and when I sell the investment and realise a capital gain?

Would welcome any thoughts, many thanks

Ouch, sounds like a painful exercise but well done that you made it. I guess it’ll be easier next year, hopefully no need for XML edits!

I used fTax in the end. I’m not sure I’d particularly recommend it, but sadly there don’t seem to be many options available! It’s very clunky and I ended up having to manually edit the XML files before it sent them in order to cope with my first accounting period being longer than 12 months (as is perfectly normal for new companies!). But I managed to get it to work eventually and at least it only cost £75.

Chris, if you take a director’s loan more than £10,000 then that’s a benefit in kind and you have to pay tax on it. It must be reported on the director’s self-assessment tax return and will be liable for Class 1 National Insurance deductions and the relevant rates of personal tax.

That’s a big limitation. Also, the April 4th/6th dates you used are not correct. The personal tax year has nothing to do with the director’s loan period, it’s the corporation tax accounting period that matters (so totally depends on your company).

Spread betting is not my area of expertise.

Great thanks for any information from Michael, Atanas and the rest, it could help us all optimise our investments!

Cheers,
Chris

I’m in the same boat Jonathan. Although I find the accountant reassuring, especially when dealing with high sums, I’d love to be able to do it on my own. HMRC’s online tool doesn’t support it yet and they want you to file using 3rd party software.