ashnealseb

Hi there

me and my fiancé were hoping to get a spouse visa for her to come to the UK so we could get married.

I am a director of a limited company. As 99.9% of directors do I just take money from the company as and when I need it. My accountants then sort
out the tax at the end of the year.

We have started the application only to find out that as her sponsor I have to show that my payslips and or dividend vouchers match exactly to payments gone into my bank account. Common sense says that this isn’t possible. My personal bank account is used for expenses etc therefore the amount paid into my personal account would never match to the penny. My accountant has told me that there would be nobody who is a director that could show an exact correlation between monies paid in to a personal account and monies on payslips or dividend vouchers because that’s not how it gets presented to the HMRC.

I am being told that the application will definitely be refused if we proceed.

i don’t know where to turn and was wondering if anyone has any advice or has been through the same thing. I miss my girlfriend and just want to be able to see her again. Any help would be really appreciated.

christmasoompa

Hi, and welcome to BE.

I’m a director of several limited companies and don’t understand why your accountant would think any dividend would be a different amount from that which is declared? It goes out of the Ltd company bank account and in to your personal one so why would the amount change?

And what do you mean your personal bank account is used for expenses? You can’t do that if you’re a Ltd company director (rather than a sole trader or similar).

ashnealseb

hi and thanks for the reply. Of course you can use your personal account for expenses. For example if I am claiming mileage use for travel then I would use my personal bank account.

so say one month I pull £5k from my bank next month £2k etc. the payslips for the paye and the dividend vouchers would never correspond with the exact payment made into the bank. The totals at the end of the year may add up but not the individual payments. I am being told that the visa would be refused purely on this basis.

my accountants are one of the top accountancy companies i the UK so I certainly trust what they say

christmasoompa

OK. Seems odd to me, my business mileage is recorded throughout the year and then added to my accounts and claimed from HMRC. Every expense goes through my Ltd company bank accounts or on the accounts - I thought it was a legal requirement to do so but even if it isn’t, it just makes far more sense to be to keep it all separate. Your accountants may be a well known firm if they really said they would be ‘nobody’ that can match payments received with recorded dividends and salary then that’s really strange IMO.

I don’t know how long you need to show your financial info for, but if you started using your business bank account only for all your expenses, so that your only income to your personal account is salary and/or dividends, then hopefully it wouldn’t be long until you do get the required documentation and are eligible to apply.

Good luck.

SanDiegogirl

You need to provide 12 months of business accounts to show that the sponsor has received income of 18,600 GBP or above.

See website below for documents to be provided for self employment:

https://assets.publishing.service.go...equirement.pdf

SanDiegogirl

so say one month I pull £5k from my bank next month £2k etc. the payslips for the paye and the dividend vouchers would never correspond with the exact payment made into the bank. The totals at the end of the year may add up but not the individual payments. I am being told that the visa would be refused purely on this basis.

Are you saying here that you would take 5K from your business account and just spend it - not paying into your personal bank account; and then take 2K the following month and do the same? i.e you took random amounts from the business account which do not correspond to payslips or dividends.

ashnealseb

hi. No I mean I would transfer the amounts into my personal account.

SanDiegogirl

... but you would have a document (payslip/dividend voucher) to show such transfer?

Pulaski

Small corporation accounts can certainly be messy, but if you think that 99.9% of company directors do what you're doing, taking money at random from the company, and running company expenses through your personal bank account then you are fooling yourself, and also breaking all sorts of rules on the deduction and timely payment of income tax and NI, not to mention perpetrating a fraud on the company.

Your company is a legal person, separate from you, not just your piggy bank, and it is legally entitled to know why it (the company) has been charged by you - your time, to pay invoices, buy supplies, etc.?. If your company's accounting records are the proverbial "bag of receipts, bank statements and cancelled cheques", you can't even be sure that the company can legally pay dividends when you take the funds, if you're calling any of the money you helped yourself to "dividends".

So "99.9% of company directors" are not doing what you're doing. Maybe 99.9% of bad company directors?