Alphabet shares let you pay one shareholder without paying everyone the same, but only if the classes, articles and paperwork are right. We'll tell you if it fits your company.
Here's a question we get most weeks. An owner has a company with two (or three) shareholders, maybe a spouse, a family member, or a co-founder, and they want to pay one of them a dividend without handing the same amount to everyone else. Perhaps the spouse has unused basic-rate band going to waste, or one founder needs cash this year and the other doesn't. The worry is always the same: "Is that even allowed, or do all the shareholders have to get the same?"
If everyone holds the same single class of ordinary shares, you genuinely are stuck, every share gets the same dividend per share, full stop. But that's exactly the problem alphabet shares are designed to solve. This guide focuses on the dividend mechanics; for the full picture of what alphabet shares are and how they're taxed, start with our alphabet shares pillar guide.
Dividends are declared per share class, not per shareholder. So a company with alphabet shares, A shares, B shares, C shares, and so on, can pay a different dividend on the A shares than on the B shares. It can pay one class generously and pay another class nothing at all. That isn't a loophole or a workaround; it's the entire point of having separate share classes in the first place.