Annual Accounts

Every UK limited company must file statutory annual accounts with Companies House and a Corporation Tax return (CT600) with HMRC. We prepare your year-end accounts accurately, file them on time, and make sure they comply with the latest reporting standards, avoiding the automatic penalties for late filing.

Beyond compliance, we use your accounts to show you what the numbers actually mean: profitability, tax due, and the planning opportunities to consider before your year-end locks in.

Statutory accounts and Corporation Tax, done together

We prepare your full set of accounts under FRS 102 or FRS 105 for micro-entities, file the version required at Companies House, and prepare the Corporation Tax computation and CT600 for HMRC alongside them. Doing both together means your tax position is consistent, reliefs such as marginal relief and capital allowances are claimed correctly, and there are no surprises.

What your accounts actually contain

A statutory set includes a balance sheet, a profit and loss account, and the notes that explain both. Smaller companies can file less at Companies House than they prepare for HMRC and their shareholders, so the public version is often shorter than the full accounts you receive. We prepare both and explain the difference, because what appears on the public register is a commercial decision as well as a compliance one, competitors and credit agencies read it.

Deadlines, and the penalties for missing them

The key dates for a UK company are:

• Companies House accounts, due 9 months after your accounting period ends;
• Corporation Tax payment, due 9 months and 1 day after the period end;
• CT600 return, due 12 months after the period end.

Note the order: the tax is payable three months before the return that calculates it is due, which is why we work to the payment date, not the filing date. Our guide to corporation tax deadlines and payments covers this in detail, including the quarterly instalments larger companies pay.

A company filing its first accounts gets a longer initial window, generally 21 months from incorporation, which is easy to misread as an annual deadline. Late accounts trigger automatic Companies House penalties from £150 up to £1,500 for a private company, doubling if you file late two years running, and these are not negotiable.

Getting the tax computation right

Accounting profit is not taxable profit. The computation adjusts for disallowable costs, capital allowances, and reliefs, and it is where the money is either saved or left behind. We check:

• Capital allowances, including the Annual Investment Allowance and full expensing on qualifying plant, covered in full expensing and the AIA;
• Marginal relief, and whether associated companies reduce your thresholds, which catches out owners with more than one company;
• R&D relief where you carry out qualifying development;
• Directors loan accounts, and whether a Section 455 charge arises;
• Loss relief, and whether losses are better carried back, forward or surrendered.

The year-end process

We work to a simple timetable: books closed and queries raised within weeks of your year end, draft accounts and the tax figure with you well before the payment date, then filing once you have approved them. That sequence exists so you learn your tax bill with months to plan for it, not days. Where your bookkeeping runs through us, most of the work is already done before the year even closes.

Dormant and small companies

Not trading does not remove your obligations. A dormant company still files accounts and a confirmation statement, and one stray transaction can end dormancy, as our guide to dormant companies explains. We handle dormant filings as a fixed low-cost service.

More than compliance

Your accounts are also a planning tool. We walk you through what they show, margins, tax due, director remuneration and reserves, and flag the moves worth making before the year-end closes, because almost nothing can be changed afterwards. Combined with proactive tax planning and reliable bookkeeping, your year-end becomes an opportunity rather than a scramble. Our note on proactive planning versus reactive returns makes the case.