Household
The two of you as individuals. Everything here feeds the personal tax computation, so include income from all sources, not just the company.
Children and benefits
Best setup
Tell it what you need to live on and what the company can afford. It tries several thousand combinations of salary, dividend, pension and loan, and reports the cheapest one that still delivers the cash.
What it has to achieve
Use the need figure from the extraction plan page if you are not sure. The available profit figure should already have your working capital held back.
Spreading it over two tax years
Bands reset on 6 April. If you need a large sum around the year end, taking part of it as a loan now and clearing it with a dividend in the new year can use two sets of bands instead of one. This shows what that is worth on your numbers.
Plain English
Short answers. Each of these is the version you would want if someone explained it to you once and you never had to look it up again.
Company
Profit and cash are different things, and only one of them can be paid out. Distributable reserves are the legal ceiling on dividends; cash at bank is the practical one. A plan needs to respect both.
Companies in the group
Every company under common control divides the corporation tax limits with the others. Three companies means each gets a third of the thresholds, so profit reaches the main rate far sooner than a standalone company would.
| Company | Does what | Profit | Cash | Reserves | Dep. rate % | Keep back |
|---|
Director's loan account
A loan can bridge a completion date, but it carries a charge if it is still outstanding nine months and a day after the year end. That charge is repaid to you once the loan is cleared, so the real cost is the money being tied up in the meantime, plus a benefit-in-charge if the balance passes £10,000.
Corporation tax
Accounts
Bank name only, no account numbers. What matters for the maths is who owns it, what wrapper it sits in, what it earns, and how much of it you are actually willing to spend.
| Bank | Type | Owner | Balance | Rate % | Keep back | Usable |
|---|
Interest and where it lands
Interest is taxed on whoever owns the account, and a joint account splits fifty-fifty. The personal savings allowance is £1,000 for a basic rate taxpayer, £500 for a higher rate taxpayer and nothing at all once you are in the additional rate band. ISA interest is outside all of it.
Commitments
What has to be paid, when. The timing matters as much as the total, because school fees and tax bills do not arrive evenly across the year.
Mortgage
School fees
Fees have carried 20% VAT since January 2025. Enter what you are actually invoiced. Most schools bill three times a year, which is why the cash calendar matters more than the annual total.
| Child | Fee a year (£) | Extras (£) | Billed | Starts |
|---|
Living costs and other outgoings
Property held personally
Mortgage interest on a personally held rental is not a deduction. You get a 20% tax credit against the bill instead, which is why rental profit can push you into a higher band faster than you expect. From April 2027 property income rates rise by two points.
Extraction plan
Set the salary, dividend and pension figures for each of you, and watch the total cost. Every number below shows its own working, so you can check it rather than trust it.
What you are taking out
| Director 1 | Director 2 | Both |
|---|
Where you sit on the scale
The band between £100,000 and £125,140 costs 60p in the pound, because the personal allowance is withdrawn at the same time as the tax is charged. It is almost always the first thing to plan around.
Try it a different way
Same net cash into your pockets, arranged differently. Each row is costed end to end, including the corporation tax the company pays before anything reaches you.
| Approach | Net to you | Tax and NI | Company cost | Cost per £1 net |
|---|
Cost of funds
You have several pots and one set of bills. This ranks every pound you could reach for by what it actually costs to use, cheapest first. Spend from the top.
Lump sum against the mortgage, or leave it on deposit?
Paying down a mortgage earns you a guaranteed, tax-free return equal to the mortgage rate. Cash on deposit earns interest that is then taxed. The comparison is between the mortgage rate and the after-tax rate on the savings.
Funding plan
This works backwards. It takes what you owe and what you spend, works out the shortfall itself, then decides which pot each pound should come from and how large the mortgage lump sum should actually be.
The one judgement it needs from you
Costs here have different shapes. Savings cost you forgone interest every year. A dividend costs its tax rate once. Overpaying the mortgage returns its rate every year. Ranking them requires a horizon, and the answer changes with it, so this is your call rather than the tool's.
Other one-off costs
Anything lumpy that is not the mortgage or school fees. A car, a tax bill, building work.
| What | Amount (£) | When |
|---|
Cash calendar
Twenty-four months of household cash. Fee instalments, the lump sum, tax payment dates and the drawings you have planned, laid against each other so you can see the tight months before you reach them.
Tax rates
Defaults are the 2026/27 figures. They are editable so the tool does not go stale, and so you can test what a change would do to you. Check them against HMRC before you act on anything.