Those who operate through a limited company often face the question of how to minimise their tax liability when using the company’s money for their own lifestyles, says The Schmidt Report. In general, money is released from the company via a mixture of dividends and remuneration, which are taxable, but can be juggled to minimise the tax liability.
Then there are benefits in kind, whereby the company, rather than paying you money which you then use to buy things, buys things for you and allows you to make use of them. Unfortunately, this is still a “taxable event”.
There is one happy exception: entertaining. This is strange, given HM Revenue & Custom’s “pathological hatred of entertaining expenditure”, but it is nonetheless the case. So if you and your spouse take some important customers (who also happen to be good friends) to the best restaurant in town, “the reimbursement by the company to you of this expenditure is not taxable”.