As part of the Government's funding strategy for health and social care, the dividend tax rates are to be increased from April 2022, alongside the temporary increases in National Insurance, and, from April 2023, the introduction of the Health and Social Care Levy. The increases in the dividend tax rates will affect you if you operate your business through a personal or family company and extract profits in the form of dividends. It will also affect you if you receive dividends from investments in shares.
Dividend tax rates from April 2022
The dividend tax rates are to increase by 1.25% from 6 April 2022. Once the dividend allowance (currently set at £2,000) and the personal allowance have been utilised, dividends are currently taxed at 7.5% where they fall within the basic rate band, at 32.5% to the extent that they fall within the higher rate band, and at 38.1% where they fall within the additional rate band.
Where the strategy is to extract profits in the form of a small salary plus dividends, typically little or no National Insurance is payable. To ensure that those extracting profits as dividends contribute towards the cost of social care, from 6 April 2022, the dividend tax rates are increased by 1.25%, in line with the temporary increases in National Insurance contributions and the rate of the Health and Social Care Levy. From 6 April 2022, once the dividend allowance and the personal allowance have been used up, dividends will be taxed at 8.75% where they fall within the basic rate band, at 33.75% where they fall within the higher rate band, and at 39.35% where they fall within the additional rate band.
Plan ahead for the increases
As the increases in the dividend rates of tax do not take effect until 6 April 2022, you have time to plan ahead. If you have sufficient retained profits, you may want to consider extracting further profits as dividends in 2021/22, rather than waiting until after 6 April 2022. This will enable you to take advantage of the current, lower, rates of dividend tax. This is likely to be advantageous if you have not used up all of your basic rate band for 2021/22. If you have an alphabet share structure, dividends can be tailored to take advantage of any unused dividend allowances and basic rate bands of other family shareholders.
In deciding whether to extract additional dividends in 2021/22, you will, however, need to take account of your marginal rate of tax. If taking additional dividends now means that they will be taxed at the upper dividend rate of 32.5%, but taking those dividends in 2022/23 would mean that they will fall within the basic rate band, it will be better to take them in 2022/23 despite the rate increase as they will be taxed at 8.75% rather than 32.5%.
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