Ltd company accounts

gravitas

Hi all

I set up a Ltd company last August with the intention of doing some consulting on the side of my full time job.

For very happy reasons (new baby and promotion at work) I just didn't have the time to give this and haven't done anything with it save for a £1600 invoice I put through in the first week.

My question is am I going to have to pay an accountant to do my 'books' for the sake of this one invoice? I'd like to keep it going as once things calm down I will be going back to it so don't want to go down the strike off route etc. I was hoping there maybe some sort of exemption if you're practically dormant?

Any help would be extremely appreciated!

Thanks

anselld

You cannot be dormant with a "significant accounting transaction".
You need to make the necessary returns to Companies House and you need to file a Corporation Tax Return, both of which you could do yourself if you wish.

gravitas

Guess I need a crash course on how to do that then

Apodemus

gravitas wrote: »

Guess I need a crash course on how to do that then

For very small companies like yours (and mine!), the combined HMRC/Companies House online process is quite easy. It is, of course quite daunting first time around, but as long as you have all the figures in front of you, it only takes about an hour to do.

My one piece of advice would be to work through both forms before pressing submit - Companies House first as it will guide you through the accounts, then tax form as it will calculate the tax, then back to Companies House to enter the tax amount back into the accounts for submission. At the end make sure you do press submit on both, though as they are separate submissions. A couple of years ago I somehow managed to miss finally submitting the tax form and it was only because I continued to get reminders from HMRC that I went back to check! Of course, if you do it early, it is a much more relaxed process, with time to sort out any glitches.

Good Luck!

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

First thing. If you set up last August, your first year ends on 31st July 17. Your accounts and corporation tax is due 1st May 2018

Pennywise

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth wrote: »

First thing. If you set up last August, your first year ends on 31st July 17. Your accounts and corporation tax is due 1st May 2018

OP needs to check CO House for the exact dates. BUT, a company formed in August would have an automatic pre set year end of 31 August the following year at Companies House, i.e. first years are always more than a year.

For HMRC, their automatic period end is 365 days from date of incorporation. So there'll almost always be a mis-match between HMRC and Co House in year 1.

Easy enough to change one or the other - and yes, 31 July makes sense so a period of slightly under a year, but OH will need to follow procedure to tell both HMRC and Co House of their choice.