A short YouTube video by Ndubuisi 'Andy' Egwim describing practical, HMRC-compliant family-pay tax strategies. This chunk (tip #5) explains that business owners may legitimately pay partners, teenagers, or adult children who genuinely help with the business, provided the work is real and pay is reasonable; wages reduce taxable profit and special rules apply for under-16s (local council child employment forms).
Now, this is number five, paying family legitimately. If your partner, teenager or adult child genuinely helps you in your business, you can pay them and it's fully legitimate. So you might have a lot of business coming in now and you need help. But they must do real work. Pay must be reasonable as well. Don't pay them 100k from helping you pack some of your books, like I've had to ship books recently. Now, that wage reduces your taxable profit for under 16s. You need to check your local council child employment rules. Usually it's just a form to fill out. Now, this is one of the most underused family tax planning tools out there.
