Loan to director

[Sam111]

Hi

I had to take out a loan from my personal company when I was unable to obtain a mortgage on a property due to the amount of work involved. My plan was use cash from the company until I can obtain a mortgage. This was a couple of weeks before my year end of 31 March. Renovation on the building now being complete, I was looking for a mortgage to repay the loan before the deadline (9 months after year end), in order to avoid the corporation and income tax that this would attract. In the middle of this, I received a letter from the courts in relation to a civil suit advising me that I had a default juddement against me as I did not appear in court (despite the fact that I did not receive the original notice of a court date). It seems that this autmatically places me on a register which would affect my credit rating, making it impossible for me to obtain credit until this matter is resolved. It could not have come at a worse time! Now I am looking at my options for repaying the loan, whilst getting legal advice. One option that occurred to me is the possibility of applying to change my year end, such that I submit accounts for an 18 months period instead of 12.

Would this buy me more time or is there any provision in tax or company legislation that would mean this is not a feasible option? I would be very grateful for the advice!

[AdamS93]

No. you have to repay the loan within 9 months of the end of the chargeable accounting period - the end of the chargeable accounting period will not change if you change your period of account (two different things).

Why not declare a dividend? The cash will have to be extracted from the company at some point....

[robbob]

If you took the loan in March then why not shorten your year end to 28/2/2019 - that would give you until 9 month after 28/2/2020 before the loan needs to be repaid for s455 tax purposes.

Note if you go down this route there is still the beneficial loan issue from the point of the loan up to 5/4/2019 - i am guessing that side of things isnt a problem?