 In most jurisdictions, the principal of such loans can be collected by the owner tax free at any time, thus allowing the owner to be paid a lower salary than would otherwise be the case once the tax rate increases.Alternatively, the owner of a new or struggling business can be paid a higher salary than his or her company can nominally afford to pay in hopes that when the business is more profitable, the amount of taxes owing in higher tax brackets will be less or none at all.At the very least, it is usually advisable for business owners to at least pay themselves enough salary to use up all of their basic personal exemptions for a given tax year, since these exemptions typically cannot be deferred to a future tax year.