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UK Accounting Compliance
UK compliance keeps moving. Making Tax Digital continues to expand, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act changed what Companies House can ask for, and HMRC penalty regimes quietly reward the firms that are early. This pillar maps the statutory deadlines and filing requirements a UK practice has to track, and the operational habits that stop them arriving as a surprise. Accupe is the tracking layer rather than the filing tool: it pulls company data, officers and filing dates from Companies House and keeps the deadline, the working papers and the client approval in one place, while you keep submitting through your existing software.
Articles in this pillar.
The 14 closest matches from 33 articles on uk accounting compliance, most relevant first.
Pre-Built UK Filing Checklists: CT600, CS01, P11D, VAT, ATED Ready-Made
Ready-made CT600, CS01, P11D, VAT and ATED checklists that become live workflows, so your firm gets an audit-ready structure without writing one first.
Why it is here. Ready-made task lists for the main UK filings, useful as a starting point for your own templates.
Companies House Sync: Catching Officer and PSC Changes
How Accupe's Companies House sync pulls live officer, PSC and filing data into the client record, and why that matters as ECCTA identity checks roll out.
Confirmation statement CS01: how the timing rules really work
A practical breakdown of CS01 confirmation statement timing: the 12-month review period, the 14-day filing deadline, early filing and batching at scale.
Why it is here. The mechanics of the review period, which is where most confirmation statement errors start.
What HMRC's MTD Penalty Soft Landing Really Means for 2026/27
HMRC will not fine late MTD Income Tax quarterly updates in 2026/27. What the soft landing covers, what it does not, and why firms should not relax.
Confirmation Statement Deadlines and Penalties for UK Limited Companies
Confirmation statement rules for UK limited companies: the review period and 14-day deadline, what ECCTA changed, penalties, and managing CS01s at scale.
Why it is here. The CS01 timetable in detail, including what happens when it is missed.
Companies House Reform: How ECCTA Affects Your Filings
An insight piece for UK accountancy and legal firms on ECCTA in 2026: identity verification, ACSP status, registered email, and the registrar's new powers.
Why it is here. A practitioner view of what the reform programme actually changes day to day.
ECCTA 2023 director identity verification: what changes for accountants in 2026
A practical guide for UK practices on ECCTA director ID verification, the ACSP route, transition deadlines and how to operationalise it across your client base.
Why it is here. The identity verification element specifically, and how it lands on your onboarding process.
Best Making Tax Digital (MTD) Compatible Practice Software
Practice management software for Making Tax Digital compared, so your firm can track, organise and automate the flood of new MTD deadlines and clients.
Why it is here. A market comparison for the filing layer, which is separate from the tracking layer.
UK VAT Thresholds and Registration in 2026: The Definitive Guide
UK VAT registration in 2026: the £90,000 threshold, both registration tests, voluntary registration economics, the schemes, MTD for VAT and deregistration.
Why it is here. Registration and deregistration thresholds, with the timing rules that decide the effective date.
Top 10 Companies House filing mistakes that cost UK firms money
Ten Companies House filing mistakes that cost UK accounting firms real money, from PSC misclassification to penalty doubling, and how to design them out.
Why it is here. The recurring errors, most of which are process failures rather than technical ones.
How UK Firms Are Preparing for the Next Phase of MTD
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD ITSA) is approaching. How top firms are restructuring their workflows to handle the quarterly compliance crush.
Why it is here. Preparation approaches from firms already segmenting their client base for quarterly reporting.
MTD for Income Tax: A Practical Guide to Your First Quarterly Update
A practical walkthrough for UK sole traders and landlords on preparing the first Making Tax Digital for Income Tax quarterly update, due 7 August 2026.
Agent authorisation: 64-8 vs digital handshake - which is faster for new clients
Paper 64-8 against the HMRC digital handshake: what each route actually authorises, real processing times, and a two-track policy for new client sign-ups.
Why it is here. The authorisation routes compared, including which one to use for a new client in a hurry.
PSC register changes: when to file PSC01, PSC02, PSC04 and PSC07
Which PSC form to file and when: PSC01, PSC02, PSC04 and PSC07 explained, with the two 14-day clocks and the errors firms make most often at Companies House.
Why it is here. Which PSC form applies to which change, which is where the filing usually goes wrong.
The fundamentals.
What every firm should have straight on this topic, whether or not it ever uses Accupe.
Companies House as a data source
The register holds the company, its officers, its PSCs and its filing dates. Pulling that onto the client record beats retyping it, and watching it beats discovering a director change at year end.
Confirmation statements
A CS01 is due every year whether or not anything changed, and the cost of drifting is a register that no longer matches reality. Track the due date from the source, not from memory.
Making Tax Digital
Digital records and quarterly updates for VAT, with MTD for Income Tax phasing in by income band. The practical work is knowing which clients cross the threshold, and when.
The PSC register
People with Significant Control changes carry short filing windows, and the trigger is usually a share transfer nobody thought to mention to you.
iXBRL accounts
Statutory accounts are tagged and filed from your accounts production software. The practice-management job around it is the deadline, the approval and keeping the filed copy findable.
Late filing penalties
Companies House and HMRC penalties escalate with time, and appeals turn on evidence of what happened when. One more reason the audit trail is worth keeping properly.
The UK filing year, and where it breaks.
A general practice tracks two registers that do not talk to each other: Companies House for the company, and HMRC for the tax. Most of the avoidable damage in a UK compliance year comes from dates that are derived rather than fixed, from clients who tell you about a change after the filing window has closed, and from penalties that escalate on a schedule nobody reads until they are on it.
The dates a UK practice has to hold
Almost none of these are calendar dates. They are offsets from something else: an accounting reference date, a review period, a tax year, a payroll run. That is why a filing register keyed to the client rather than to the month is the only version that survives contact with a real client base.
| Obligation | Deadline | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Annual accounts, private company | Nine months after the accounting reference date | A first set is due 21 months from incorporation, which catches out newly formed companies |
| Annual accounts, public company | Six months after the accounting reference date | Three months tighter than the private company window |
| Confirmation statement | Within 14 days of the end of the 12 month review period | Due whether or not anything changed, and the review period moves when you file early |
| CT600 | Twelve months after the end of the accounting period | The filing deadline, not the payment one |
| Corporation tax payment | Nine months and one day after the end of the accounting period | Earlier than the return. Large companies pay by quarterly instalments instead |
| Self Assessment registration | By 5 October following the end of the tax year | The step new clients most often miss before they reach you |
| Self Assessment return | 31 October on paper, 31 January online | Balancing payment 31 January, payments on account 31 January and 31 July |
| PAYE real time information | On or before each payday | Late RTI is a separate penalty regime from late payment |
| P60 to employees | By 31 May following the tax year end | Employer obligation, but the practice usually owns it |
| P11D and P11D(b) | By 6 July following the tax year end | Class 1A National Insurance follows shortly afterwards |
| CIS monthly return | By the 19th of the month following the tax month | Nil returns still have to be filed |
| VAT return, standard quarterly | One calendar month and seven days after the period end | Payment normally follows the same deadline |
Making Tax Digital, in the order it matters to you
MTD for VAT is settled: VAT-registered businesses keep digital records and file through compatible software, and the practical work now is exceptions rather than migration. MTD for Income Tax is the live project, and it is phasing in by qualifying income band, highest band first, with lower bands following in later years.
The published phasing starts with qualifying income above 50,000 pounds from April 2026 and above 30,000 pounds from April 2027, with further bands announced for later years. Because the bands and the timetable have moved before, confirm the current position on HMRC’s guidance before you commit a client to a plan built on a specific date.
The operationally significant point is not the software. It is that qualifying income is assessed from a prior tax year’s return, which means the client who crosses the threshold is identifiable from work you have already done. Firms that run that query once a year onboard clients into quarterly reporting calmly. Firms that wait for HMRC’s letter do it all at once.
- Run the threshold query against last year’s returns and tag the clients who cross it, before the mandation year starts
- Split the client base by who keeps digital records today and who sends a carrier bag, because those are two completely different onboarding conversations
- Agree, in writing, whose job the quarterly update is and what it costs, because the fee conversation is harder after the first quarter than before it
- Check your agent authorisations early, since a missing authorisation is discovered at the worst possible moment
What the Companies House reforms changed for practitioners
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act turned Companies House from a passive filing repository into a body with powers to query, reject and remove information. For an accountant the practical effects are administrative rather than dramatic, but they change onboarding.
Companies must maintain an appropriate registered office address, so a PO box is no longer acceptable, and must supply a registered email address for contact with the registrar. Identity verification for directors and people with significant control is being introduced, phased across new appointments and the existing population, and anyone filing on a company’s behalf is affected by the same programme.
Since the timetable for each element has moved during implementation, treat the direction as settled and the specific commencement dates as something to confirm. What is worth doing now is checking that every client company has a compliant registered office and a working registered email, because those are cheap to fix in advance and disruptive to fix under a deadline.
The changes clients forget to tell you about
Nearly every late filing at Companies House starts with an event the client did not think was an accounting matter. These are the recurring ones, and all of them are visible on the register before they become visible in your inbox.
- A share transfer or a new shareholder, which can change the PSC position. The company must update its own PSC register within 14 days and notify Companies House within a further 14 days
- A director appointment or resignation, which also usually triggers a due diligence refresh
- A change of registered office, especially where the previous agent was receiving the post
- A change to the accounting reference date, which moves the accounts deadline and quietly invalidates your diary
- A company that has stopped trading but has not been made dormant, which is a different filing position from being dormant from incorporation
- A client who has appointed a second agent for one tax head, so your authorisation covers less than you think
Penalties, and the appeal that actually succeeds
Companies House late filing penalties for a private company run at 150 pounds up to one month late, 375 pounds between one and three months, 750 pounds between three and six months, and 1,500 pounds beyond six months, and they double where accounts are filed late in two successive years. Public company penalties are higher. A late confirmation statement is not charged the same way, but the company and its officers commit an offence and the company can be struck off, which is materially worse.
Self Assessment carries an immediate 100 pounds penalty for a late return, then daily penalties, then further charges at six and twelve months, and VAT now works on a points-based system for late submissions with separate charges and interest for late payment.
Appeals turn on reasonable excuse, and reasonable excuse turns on evidence with dates on it. The successful appeal is almost never an argument about fairness. It is a timeline: when the records were requested, when the client responded, when the event that prevented filing occurred, and what the firm did about it. That timeline either exists in your system or it is reconstructed afterwards from memory, and reviewers can tell the difference.
Authorisation and records
Agent authorisation is its own small compliance area. A 64-8 covers the traditional heads, the digital handshake covers online services, and the two do not always overlap in the way people assume. The failure mode is discovering at the filing deadline that you can see one tax head and not another.
On retention, the practical rule for company work is six years from the end of the accounting period, which is what HMRC expects for company records. The Companies Act minimum for a private company’s accounting records is shorter, so six years is the number to work to rather than the statutory floor. For Self Assessment, business records should be kept longer than non-business ones, and the safe habit is a single firm-wide retention policy rather than a per-client judgement.
How firms actually keep on top of UK filings.
The firms that never miss a Companies House deadline are not the ones with the best memory. They are the ones whose deadline data comes from the register rather than from a spreadsheet somebody maintains.
Build the filing register from the source
Pull company number, officers, PSCs, accounting reference date, accounts due and confirmation statement due directly from Companies House onto the client record. Retyped dates go stale silently; imported ones can be refreshed.
Set internal deadlines, not statutory ones
Work backwards from the statutory date to a records-in date, a preparation window, a review slot and a client approval window. The statutory date should be the last thing on the timeline, not the thing the team is working to.
Watch the register, do not just read it
A daily or weekly check for director, PSC, address and SIC code changes turns the register into an early warning system. A director change is also a due diligence trigger, so route it to both queues.
Chase records on a schedule with a written trail
Request, follow up, escalate, and record when a deadline became at risk because of the delay. That record is the difference between a penalty the firm absorbs and one the client understands.
Gate filing behind a recorded approval
Nothing goes to Companies House or HMRC without the client’s approval captured against the job. An electronic signature or a portal approval is stronger than an email thread, because it has an audit trail attached.
Archive the filed copy where the job lives
The submission receipt, the filed accounts, the return as submitted and the approval should sit together. The point at which you need them is the point at which nobody has time to look for them.
Reconcile your client list against the register annually
Companies you no longer act for, companies proposed for strike-off, companies whose accounting reference date moved. One sweep a year prevents a surprising number of the deadlines that arrive without warning.
What a good UK compliance file contains
This is also the file that makes an appeal winnable, a professional indemnity notification straightforward, and a handover to a colleague possible.
- The company’s current register data, with the date it was last refreshed from Companies House
- Internal and statutory deadlines both recorded, so it is clear which one the team was working to
- The records request and every follow-up, dated, with the client’s replies
- The working papers and the review sign-off, with the reviewer named
- The client’s approval of the accounts or return before submission, captured rather than recalled
- The submission confirmation and the filed copy, stored against the same job
- Any correspondence with HMRC or Companies House, including anything relevant to a later appeal
Where Accupe fits
What the product actually does here.
- Companies House search and import: company details, officers, PSCs and filing dates onto the client record
- Statutory filing deadline tracking that refreshes daily, with director and PSC change watching
- Recurring jobs and template checklists for VAT quarters, year ends and confirmation statements
- Invoices carrying your VAT number, with per-line VAT and Stripe payment links
Accupe is not MTD-recognised software and does not submit anything to HMRC or Companies House. You keep filing exactly as you do now; what changes is that the deadline, the working papers and the client approval stop living in four different places.
Straight answers.
The questions firms ask about uk accounting compliance, including the ones where the answer is no.
When are a private company’s annual accounts due at Companies House?
Nine months after the accounting reference date for an established private company. A company’s first set of accounts is due 21 months after the date of incorporation, which is the version that most often catches out newly formed clients. Changing the accounting reference date moves the deadline, so any change needs to be reflected in your diary the same day.
What is the difference between the corporation tax payment date and the CT600 deadline?
They are different dates and the payment comes first. Corporation tax is normally payable nine months and one day after the end of the accounting period, while the CT600 is not due until twelve months after the period end. Larger companies pay by quarterly instalments instead. Clients regularly assume the money is due when the return is, which is a three month misunderstanding.
What happens if a confirmation statement is filed late?
There is no automatic financial penalty in the way there is for late accounts, but the company and its officers commit an offence and the company can be struck off the register. In practice, striking off is the real risk, because it disrupts banking and contracts long before anybody worries about the compliance point.
How quickly does a PSC change have to be filed?
The company must update its own PSC register within 14 days of the change, and then notify Companies House within a further 14 days. The trigger is usually a share transfer that nobody thought to mention to the accountant, which is why watching the register is more reliable than waiting to be told.
Who is in MTD for Income Tax and when?
It is phasing in by qualifying income band, starting with the highest. The published steps begin with qualifying income above 50,000 pounds from April 2026 and above 30,000 pounds from April 2027, with lower bands announced for later years. Because the timetable has changed before, confirm the current bands on HMRC’s guidance. Qualifying income is assessed from a prior year’s return, so you can identify affected clients from work you have already filed.
Can a late filing penalty be appealed?
Yes, on the basis of a reasonable excuse, but appeals succeed on evidence rather than argument. What wins is a dated timeline: when records were requested, when the client responded, what happened, and what the firm did about it. That is a reason to keep the chase trail in a system rather than in individual mailboxes.
How long should we keep client records?
For company work, six years from the end of the accounting period is the practical rule, since that is what HMRC expects, and it is longer than the Companies Act minimum for a private company’s accounting records. Business records for Self Assessment are kept longer than non-business ones. A single firm-wide retention policy is easier to operate than a per-client judgement, and it also answers the data protection question at the same time.
Does Accupe file to HMRC or Companies House?
No. Accupe is not MTD-recognised software and submits nothing to either body. It reads company data, officers, PSCs and filing dates from Companies House, tracks the deadlines and the approvals around your filings, and keeps the working papers and the audit trail in one place. You keep submitting through the software you already use.
What is the single most common avoidable filing failure?
A confirmation statement missed because nobody was watching a date that moves. It carries no tax consequence, which is exactly why it drifts down the list, but a persistent failure is a criminal matter for the officers and a strike-off risk for the company. It is also the easiest obligation in the practice to systematise, because the date comes straight from Companies House and needs no judgement at all.
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