How we restructured a New Malden Korean restaurant for £9,200 saving
Client K runs a popular Korean restaurant on the New Malden High Street trading as a Ltd company, with several family members working in the business, kitchen, front of house and management, but the structure hadn't been reviewed in years. The director remuneration was inefficient, the VAT treatment of eat-in versus takeaway wasn't optimised, and tips weren't structured through a tronc.
We reviewed and restructured. We set the directors' salaries at the NIC-optimal level with dividends split across the family shareholders to use their allowances and bands, reviewed the VAT (eat-in and hot takeaway standard-rated, packaged Korean groceries zero-rated), set up a proper tronc for the waiting staff's tips, and claimed the Employment Allowance against employer NIC on the kitchen and waiting staff.