We don’t merely produce accounts – we interpret them

Companies or trades registered as Ltd Company, LLP, or Sole Trade under the UK Govt has to submit their annual accounts by the end of their 12-month mark, starting from the date of their inception. The year end accounts are also known as Statutory or Company Accounts and can provide priceless information about your business, summing up your entire financial year in one single report. You need to submit your official one-year accounts with HMRC. The primary goal of final accounts is to ensure your company or trade complies with the State and Govt laws and regulation along with valid accounting principles. This record can also be used to make VAT calculations and tax return filing effortless.

How does Final Accounting Help Companies?

Year end accounting is not just for the UK Govt to ensure your company or trade is following the legal rules. It can also help the companies understand their business of financial year better. As a company or trade owner, you can look at your sales margin and company performance and compare it to last year’s final accounting. This can help companies understand which strategies worked best for their company and which ones would need modification to increase productivity or functionality. By understanding the strength and eliminating the weakness, companies and trades can function better and drive success in a more structured manner. This can also help partners keep a tab on their contribution, returns, and more by the end of each financial year.

The Annual Accounts needs to be filed with the HMRC and we have pieced together a list of all the valid documents you need to file-

• Company Tax Return
• Income Statement
• Financial Position Statement
• Footnotes mentioning the nature and amount of transactions made between the company and its directors

There are two parts of a year end accounts, namely, the Annual Accounts that needs to be submitted to the Companies House and the Corporation Tax along with your Annual Accounts to the HMRC. The former has a timeline of nine month from your official date of year end and filings to the HMRC needs to be done with twelve months from the official date of company year end.  At Goodhams we start calculating your financial year end reports by working with you well ahead of time so that you’re prepared to meet the deadlines without hassle. Timely submission is crucial, the failure to which will be punished in terms of penalties.

Missing Deadlines

If you miss the filing deadline, both HMRC and the Company House will levy penalties. The penalties keep increasing with time. For instance, if you’re late by just one day, the HMRC will levy a £100 fine. Here is a list of late penalties that you may face if you’re not filing your report on time-

Companies House

£150 fine for 1 month late filing

£375 fine for 1-3 month late filing

£750 fine for 3-6 month late filing

£1500 fine for over 6 months

If you don’t file your Annual tax report consecutively for two years your penalties will double.

HMRC 

£100 for 1 day late filing

£100 more for 3 month late filing

Penalty of 10% added to unpaid taxes for 6 months

Another 10% penalty added to unpaid taxes for 12 months

Comprehensive Help with Your Annual Accounts

Apart from year end accounts, a business owner needs to settle a couple of other things too. For instance, if you’re a VAT registered company, you’d need to file your VAT returns at around the same time as your Annual Accounts. You would also need to file a confirmation statement and get your company or trade confirmed by the Companies House, failure to do which results in additional penalties. Do you know what that means? Financial year-end for your company could be quite stressful. Maintain paperwork, balancing all your legal filings, ensuring everything is in compliance with the law, meeting deadlines- the list goes on. Thankfully, we at Goodhams have tested ourselves over the decade maxing out our potential and now we have a comprehensive team of documentation experts, accounting maestros, tax advisers and financial strategists working together to help you make the entire year end accounting process comfortable.

The information given here is just a general sum-up of what you can expect during your company’s final accounts span. If you want further information or if you want to talk to one of our financial strategists, please reach out to us with a quick call and we’ll happily address your concern.