No PAYE Reference? What to Enter When You Only Take Dividends | TinyTax Support

No PAYE Reference? What to Enter When You Only Take Dividends

If you only take dividends from your company — no salary — you do not need a PAYE reference at all, and you should leave that field blank.

Why the form asks for it

On the "Income I'm declaring this year" table, each company row has three linked fields for salary: PAYE reference, Pay, and UK tax. These three only apply if the company actually paid you a salary through PAYE during the tax year.

What to enter if you are dividend-only

If a company paid you dividends but no salary:

  1. Leave PAYE reference blank
  2. Leave Pay blank
  3. Leave UK tax blank
  4. Enter the amount you received in the Dividend column
TinyTax treats these three fields as a group — either all three are filled in (because you were paid a salary), or all three are left empty. You will only see a validation message if you fill in one or two of the three but not all — that message is there to catch a half-finished entry, not to force you to invent a PAYE reference.

If you did take a salary as well as dividends

Enter the PAYE reference exactly as it appears on your payslip or P60 — the format is three digits, a slash, then your employer's reference (for example 123/A456). This is your employer's PAYE scheme reference, not a personal number, so it will be the same for every employee at that company.

Common questions

I am the only director and I do not run payroll — is that a problem?

No. Many owner-directors take income purely as dividends and never register for PAYE at all. That is a completely normal setup and TinyTax handles it — just enter your dividend income and leave the salary fields empty.

What if my company has employees who are paid through PAYE, but I personally only take dividends?

The PAYE ref/Pay/UK tax triplet is about what you personally were paid, not whether the company runs a payroll for other staff. If you yourself received no salary, leave the triplet blank on your own row regardless of whether the company operates PAYE for anyone else.

This is about overseas employment, not my own UK company — does the same answer apply?

No — that is a different case. If you have a job with an overseas employer with no UK PAYE reference, do not add it as a row with the PAYE reference left blank; see our Self Assessment scope guide for why, and what to do instead.

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