For personal and family companies, a tax efficient strategy for extracting profits is to take a small salary and to extract any further funds needed outside the company in the form of dividends (see https://www.janesaccounting.co.uk/post/tax-optimal-salary-for-2021-22). However, while there are no restrictions on taking a salary if the company is making a loss, the same is not true of dividends. Do you have retained profits? Dividends can only be paid out of retained profits