The views expressed in this post are my own personal (HRA protected) views, and are not representative of any organisation I have any involvement with.
In a sense a director can pay himself as little or as much and as often as he wants. weekly or monthly if it is an owner managed company. Obviously is more difficult to do this with other directors and share holders involved.
This is why they have different NI rules for Directors to ensure they don't pay 1 lump sum in 1 month and then pay nothing for the rest of the year to avoid paying NI.
As Kris state, it is worth looking into a combination of a low salary to ensure pays just enough NI and perhaps a little tax and then pay dividends for the rest as long as there is profit to pay the dividends out of.
This can save quite a bit of tax as dividends are taxed at 10% for the basic rate band, whilst normal paye is taxed at 20% for basic rate. Higher rate tax payers will pay 40% on paye but only 32.5% on dividends.
The tax rates go up more once over the £150,000 threshold.
