Private Company Dividends & Distributions - Potential Pitfalls & Practical Solutions

Introduction

When advising director/shareholders of profitable private companies on the best way(s) to extract money from their companies each year, a distribution by way of dividend is often an attractive option - but dividends are only lawful if there are sufficient distributable profits, and the proper company law procedures have been followed.

If you get it wrong, it can mean legal liabilities for the shareholder and/or the directors who approved the payment - and a string of cases show how unsympathetic the courts (and HMRC) can be if you try to re-categorise a payment as something other than a distribution later on.

This webinar will equip you to identify when a private company client is making a distribution (which isn’t always straightforward), ensure they have sufficient distributable profits to do so, and advise them of the company law steps they must follow to keep the distribution/dividend lawful, while avoiding common pitfalls and problems.

What You Will Learn

This webinar will cover the following:

• Is it a distribution/dividend? Latest developments in and out of the courts
• Company law essentials for dividends
• Legal consequences of unlawful dividends
• Dividend case law review, including re-categorising payments and dividend policies
• Interim dividends and dividends based on interim accounts - what’s new?
• Problem areas and solutions

This webinar was recorded on 13th November 2023

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