How to pay dividends so as not to attract the attention of the tax service

According to Internet sources, there are 6 ways to withdraw funds from an LLC legally. But in fact, there are only 2 legitimate ways. If you use the rest, there will be fines and additional charges, as well as criminal liability.

To be fully confident in the legality of the withdrawal of funds, you need to pay salaries and dividends. The law does not prohibit other methods, but if an organization has taken actions only to withdraw actions, then the Federal Tax Service may consider that the organization is evading taxes.  The tax service will check the company especially carefully, which will put an individual entrepreneur in place of the manager or create an individual entrepreneur, where it will direct part of the transactions. This method is considered the most profitable for LLC, because the tax burden is minimal. Often such a scheme leads to inspections, additional charges and fines. 

The most expensive way to get cash: you need to pay 13% of personal income tax + 30% of insurance premiums. By this amount, you can reduce the tax base for income tax. Companies compensate 20% for the OSN, 15% for the USN.

When paying under an employment contract, the tax inspectorate will receive all deductions that are established by law. The tax service will not ask the justification for these payments: whether a person really works in the company and whether there are results that you can document.

Dividends — the only official and legal way to get cash Payment of dividends is the distribution of profits for the current or previous reporting year after payment of income tax of 20% for the OSNO (or 15% for the USN “Income minus expenses”). At the same time, personal income tax of 13% for residents (or 15% for non-residents) is withheld from each transferred amount.

Consider another situation.

What are the tax consequences of illegal payment of dividends to a company participant-an individual.

The LLC has the right to make a decision on the payment of dividends to participants annually or more often – the general meeting of participants or the sole founder alone (paragraph 1 of Article 28 of the Law of February 8, 1998 No. 14-FZ). The source of payment of dividends is the net profit of the organization, including the profit of previous years (Article 43 of the Tax Code, paragraph 1 of Article 28 of the Law of February 8, 1998 No. 14-FZ). Therefore, if the profit is not distributed according to the results of previous years, then it is possible to pay dividends at its expense in the current year. If an organization has paid interim dividends, and a loss has been formed at the end of the year, in such a situation, payments to participants cannot be considered dividends. These are gratuitous payments.

Initially made records and calculations will have to be adjusted. When taxing, it is impossible to reduce the base for calculating taxes on them (Clause 49 of Article 270 of the Tax Code). In case of payment to resident participants, it is not necessary to keep personal income tax. The rate of 13% in this case does not change (Article 224 of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation, letter of the Federal Tax Service dated March 19, 2009 No. SHS-22-3/210). There is no need to add additional contributions to the reclassified interim dividends (Article 420 of the Tax Code, paragraph 1 of Article 20.1 of the Law of 24.07.1998 No. 125-FZ). This is due to the fact that neither dividends nor subsequently gratuitous payments relate to remuneration for fulfilling obligations under labor and civil law contracts. Consequently, inspectors should not charge additional contributions during the audit.