The Employment page of the Self Assessment tax return for limited company directors
This article provides a summary of the Employment page of the Self Assessment tax return and the relevant information required to complete it if you're a limited company director.
You need to record the details of your employment as the director of a limited company, as well as any you might have, on the Employment page of your Self Assessment tax return.
Please note:
- We're not authorised by HMRC to provide accounting or tax advice. Therefore, FreeAgent’s support team cannot advise you on how to fill in your tax return correctly or check your figures to see if they are correct, unless they have been calculated by the software. If you’re unsure whether a figure on your tax return is right, please speak to your accountant or to HMRC.
- If you use FreeAgent with your accountant, they may file your Self Assessment returns on your behalf and restrict your ability to access and file your Self Assessment returns. Please speak to your accountant if you have any questions or want to be able to access these. FreeAgent is unable to change these permissions for you.
- From the 2025/26 tax year onwards, HMRC has introduced new boxes for the Employment page and requires directors of close companies to report more detailed information relating to their shareholdings and any dividend income they receive from those companies.
Completing the Employment page
Entering your income
If you have run your payroll through FreeAgent, it will automatically complete the ‘Income’ section for your employment as a limited company director. Please note that if you created journal entries for your payroll instead, or if your accountant has uploaded your payslips to FreeAgent, you will need to add the relevant figures to the Employment page manually following the same process as you would for additional paid jobs.
Adding additional paid jobs
If you have another paid job in addition to your role as a limited company director, you will need to add and complete an employment section for each of your other jobs.
To do this, return to the top of the page, enter the name of your other employer, select ‘Add employment’ and enter your taxable gross pay and the tax deducted into boxes 1 and 2 respectively.
You’ll find this information on your form P60, or form P45 if you left during the tax year, which you will have been given by your employer. The figures you need will be highlighted with asterisks on the form.
You'll also need to enter your employer's PAYE reference which you'll find on your P60. If your employer does not have a PAYE reference write 'None' (without the apostrophes) in the PAYE reference box.
When you enter a PAYE reference, make sure that the first part of it has three digits. If your employer's PAYE reference only has two digits in the first part, e.g. 25/A1234, then please enter a 0 before the first digit, e.g. 025/A1234.
Class 4 National Insurance
If you have earnings from both employment and self employment, your Class 4 National Insurance contributions may be restricted to ensure that you don’t pay considerably more National Insurance than a person who has a similar level of earnings from a single employment.
Enter the relevant amount from the P60 your employer gave you in the ‘Earnings for Class 1 from P60’ field in the ‘Class 4 National Insurance maximum charge’ section.
The amount will be labelled ‘Earnings above the PT, up to and including the Upper Earnings Limit’ on your P60. FreeAgent will work out how much you’re liable to pay based on your earnings.
Exempt from class 4 NICs
If you are exempt from paying class 4 NICs (e.g. if you are under 16, over state pension age, or not resident in the UK for tax purposes), you should navigate to the Self-employment page of your Self Assessment in FreeAgent and select ‘Yes’ in either box 37 (if you’re using the short version) or box 101 (if you’re using the long version) of the ‘Class 2 and Class 4 National Insurance contributions (NICs)’ area.
Entering benefits and expenses
If you received benefits (such as a company car) or were reimbursed expenses during the tax year, you may have been given a form P11D by your employer.
If this is the case, you will need to set the ‘Benefits from your employment’ section to ‘Yes’ and complete the relevant fields using the information on the form. Use box 16 to record any expenses that the company has paid back to you.
If you incurred any expenses that you’re entitled to claim tax relief for and haven't been reimbursed for, set the ‘Employment expenses’ section to ‘Yes’ and complete boxes 17-20 using the information on the form.
If your employer reimbursed you for expenses during the tax year and this isn’t recorded on the P11D (or you didn’t receive a form), you don’t need to enter these figures here.
If you do not have a form P11D and did not incur any expenses while doing your job, you can leave both the 'Benefits from employment' and 'Employment expenses' sections set to ‘No’.
Was this company a close company?
From the 2025/26 tax year onwards, HMRC has introduced new boxes for the Employment page and requires directors of close companies to report more detailed information relating to their shareholdings and any dividend income they receive from those companies.
A separate Employment page is needed for each job, directorship or office with information added for relevant tax return boxes:
- Box 7.1 - the name of the close company
- Box 7.2 - the company registration number
- Box 7.3 - the amount of the dividend income (even if this is zero) received from the close company; this will also have been reported as part of the figure on the Main Return page in box 4.
- Box 7.4 - the total percentage of the share capital in the close company owned (or 'held' as per the regulations) even if this is zero.
If you are unsure whether this needs to be filled in, please speak to your accountant and/or HMRC.