As a director you have to take a certain salary according to tax law. Suppose you want you get some supplementary income from the corporation. Often it is fiscally advantageous to do so via a dividend instead of an additional salary.
Suppose you receive a salary of € 60.000 in 2015. You have had a good year wit a result of €160.000 and would like an additional € 25.000 from the corporation.
Are you going to take this € 25,000 via payroll, then 52% income tax is withheld, namely € 13,000.
Is this amount taken out the corporation as dividend, then first the company pays 20% corporation tax. The remaining 80% is taxed at 25% income tax.
The effective tax rate was 40% through a distribution of dividend, namely € 10,000.
In this example you will save € 3.000 tax money when choosing dividend.