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Filing own company accounts

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langley59
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Filing own company accounts

#305062

Postby langley59 » May 2nd, 2020, 12:37 pm

I have a small limited company which I used to use as a contractor and which nowadays just has cash plus some non performing loans. I don't intend to use the company for any new business and I am paying a dividend each year until the loans are resolved one way or the other and the company's money runs out at which time the company will be wound up. I estimate this may be 5 to 10 years away. Hitherto I have prepared my own accounts but used an accountant to give them an independent stamp of authenticity, I file the accounts at Companies House but he files the tax return with HMRC. The accounts are drawn up using the micro-entity rules.

The accountant's costs are now significant given the almost dormant state of the company and I am tempted to file the accounts and tax return at Companies House myself using the 'File your company accounts and tax return' option at Companies House:

https://www.gov.uk/file-your-company-ac ... tax-return

Does anyone else do this themselves and if so are there any pitfalls?

Many thanks.

fca2019
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305092

Postby fca2019 » May 2nd, 2020, 3:20 pm

Hi, yes you could do it yourself and save the accountants costs. Depends if you need to keep the company. And have financial know how to do yourself.

I have no personal experience of this but used to work for a mid sized accountants in practice. I used to prepare a lot of dormants and near dormants, time consuming and expensive.

I would have thought the least hassle thing to do would be close the bank account, then strike company off if not using again. Would need to inform tax office by phone and writing and file relevant form with Companies House.

Depends what you're doing now and in the future.

A near dormant company would mean you need to prepare and file accounts and prepare and file a ct return and ibxrl tagged accounts, and a personal self assessment tax return as a director.

langley59
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305117

Postby langley59 » May 2nd, 2020, 5:14 pm

fca2019 wrote:Hi, yes you could do it yourself and save the accountants costs. Depends if you need to keep the company. And have financial know how to do yourself.

I have no personal experience of this but used to work for a mid sized accountants in practice. I used to prepare a lot of dormants and near dormants, time consuming and expensive.

I would have thought the least hassle thing to do would be close the bank account, then strike company off if not using again. Would need to inform tax office by phone and writing and file relevant form with Companies House.

Depends what you're doing now and in the future.

A near dormant company would mean you need to prepare and file accounts and prepare and file a ct return and ibxrl tagged accounts, and a personal self assessment tax return as a director.


Thanks for the response. I do think I have the know how to do this, however my concerns are more around do I need special software to file the tax return, keeping up to date with rule/disclosure changes and losing the independent accountant's report possibly making me more likely to be investigated by HMRC?

Re the bank account I need to maintain this as I receive repayments from the loans from time to time and need the account to pay the dividends, at least until the funds are exhausted in a number of years time.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305236

Postby fca2019 » May 3rd, 2020, 9:28 am

Morning, you could ask for a quote from another high street accountant. Maybe more than one. You could say you'd prepare the accounts yourself without an accountants report, and file these at companies house yourself. This will reduce your fees significantly. They would need to quote for "tagging" the accounts and preparing the company tax return.

The accounts can be prepared in word or excel. If simple shouldn't be a problem. However when file at companies house they do check the format, so suggest do early. I have had a set of accounts rejected in the past and fined and then had to get the fine revoked. If send early have time to resubmit if rejected.

Wouldn't worry about HMRC investigation as long as straightforward affairs, paid the right tax and completed return right and uploaded accounts and tax comp in right format.

Accounts and tax comp have to be tagged in iXRBL format, not word, to be uploaded to hmrc. This is a specialist skill, but if short, should be a nominal fee. A half way house would be a tax accountant doing the ct return and tagging. If very confident in tax, could pay just for tagging, and do the Ct600 online yourself. But from sounds of it you could go for the half way.

langley59
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305250

Postby langley59 » May 3rd, 2020, 10:15 am

Sorry I should probably have been more explicit. I have very little concern about preparing the accounts or computing the tax return numbers. I prepare draft accounts for my accountant and all he does is publish them in the correct format and attach his accountant's report, I then file them at Companies House. He however files the tax return with HMRC. All I need to understand is can I file both accounts and tax return at Companies House without having to obtain special software? NB. I am a retired chartered accountant although have not worked in public practice for decades.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305255

Postby AndyPandy » May 3rd, 2020, 10:34 am

langley59 wrote:Sorry I should probably have been more explicit. I have very little concern about preparing the accounts or computing the tax return numbers. I prepare draft accounts for my accountant and all he does is publish them in the correct format and attach his accountant's report, I then file them at Companies House. He however files the tax return with HMRC. All I need to understand is can I file both accounts and tax return at Companies House without having to obtain special software? NB. I am a retired chartered accountant although have not worked in public practice for decades.


Yes you can do both. I have filed mine online for years after being in a similar situation - Accountants costs kept going up (Acct started off as a 2-person band and after a few mergers I ended up with Baker Tilley as my Accountants for a Business that, at the time was doing less and less year-on-year).

You will need to register for a Government Gateway Account if you haven't done so already. After that, log on and follow the steps. There is a question early on as to whether you want to file CH as well. Just say yes. After that it's just a case of filling the boxes and checking that the final figures look about right. I make notes each year as to what goes where as only doing this once a year gives me ample time to forget. It takes me less than a day. I'm not an Accountant.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305262

Postby Laughton » May 3rd, 2020, 11:02 am

I'm with AndyPandy. I was in a similar situiation as you many years ago (about 20) where I was paying my accountant £3,000 per year (and that's 20 years ago so heaven knows how much it would be in today's money). I was abit worried about how HMRC could look on accounts prepared and submitted by me rather than an accountant so I spoke to Inspector of Taxes and they confirmed that they were not looked on any differently.

For the past 20 odd years I've been submitting accounts myself, saved loads of money, never had HMRC query any of my submissions, never had an HMRC inspection. And that's for a trading company so your situation should be much simpler.

You complet e a Corporation Tax Return on the HMRC website, it's pretty foolproof as it won't let you complete if the Balance Sheet doesn't balance and it computes the tax due so if that's not what you make it then that's another good check. And it automatically saves your entries and let's you go back and correct mistakes, even days later, if you get towards the end but before you submit and find something doesn't work.

As I said, my company was still trading so there was a fair bit of information to enter but it only took me about an afternoon to complete and I then had the satisfaction of saving all those accountant's fees. No need to submit separately to Companies House, there's an option for abbreviated accounts to be submitted automatically when you complete the Corp Tax Return.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305269

Postby langley59 » May 3rd, 2020, 11:14 am

Thanks for the further replies. On the link I provided in the original post to the 'File your company accounts and tax return' with Companies House it says:

Use this service to file your company or association’s:

Company Tax Return (CT600) for Corporation Tax with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
accounts to Companies House
Company Tax Return and accounts at the same time if they’re for the same accounting period
The service will automatically convert your accounts to the required format (iXBRL).


This seems to imply that it is very simple to do everything in one go through Companies House as long as you have the numbers for the accounts and tax return.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305273

Postby Laughton » May 3rd, 2020, 11:21 am

I'm not sure you can do it via Companies House - rather you do it via the HMRC site and that submission automatically submits to Companies House.

Do you already have a Government Gateway log in for your company? That's the first step but it's very simple, it just means applying online and then you have to wait for the two part passwords to arrive in the post (or at least that's how it worked when I did it).

If you already submit VAT Returns or PAYE RTIs online then you should have a Government Gateway account and you can add Corportation Tax to that.

langley59
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305354

Postby langley59 » May 3rd, 2020, 3:03 pm

Laughton wrote:Do you already have a Government Gateway log in for your company? That's the first step but it's very simple, it just means applying online and then you have to wait for the two part passwords to arrive in the post (or at least that's how it worked when I did it).

If you already submit VAT Returns or PAYE RTIs online then you should have a Government Gateway account and you can add Corportation Tax to that.


I don't have a Government Gateway account for my company (I have one for personal tax). I'm struggling to find the HMRC webpage to create one, everything seems to have been replaced by coronavirus related content!

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305476

Postby gryffron » May 3rd, 2020, 10:05 pm

I concur with Laughton. The way to go is the HMRC gateway. This will also prepare everything you need for CompHse (or at least it used to)

Doing it via CompHse won't be sufficient for the taxman. The CompHse return is a subset of the tax info. The tax system can automatically generate the CompHse return for you. The converse cannot be true as it would need extra info.

fca2019 wrote:strike company off if not using again. Would need to inform tax office by phone and writing and file relevant form with Companies House.

Also, just to be clear. Striking off at CompHse is NOT sufficient to close the tax account. I got caught out by this. You have to explicitly tell the tax office separately, otherwise they'll be chasing you for accounts, and fines for not submitting them.
(I think I'm only agreeing with what fca2019 said. But that compound sentence isn't clear.)

Gryff

PS Are you sure your company doesn't already have a Gateway account? How did your accountant submit the info?

langley59
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305482

Postby langley59 » May 3rd, 2020, 11:10 pm

gryffron wrote:PS Are you sure your company doesn't already have a Gateway account? How did your accountant submit the info?

Thats a good question. I will ask him, although that will probably have him thinking I'm going to dispense with his services.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305520

Postby redsturgeon » May 4th, 2020, 8:09 am

langley59 wrote:
gryffron wrote:PS Are you sure your company doesn't already have a Gateway account? How did your accountant submit the info?

Thats a good question. I will ask him, although that will probably have him thinking I'm going to dispense with his services.


Is that I problem? I'd have thought your best way forward is to let him know and ask him what you need to do.

John

langley59
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305542

Postby langley59 » May 4th, 2020, 10:06 am

I asked the accountant and my access is sorted. Thanks for the suggestion.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305647

Postby langley59 » May 4th, 2020, 5:20 pm

Thanks to the posters who made helpful suggestions on this. I filed my company accounts and tax return this afternoon. It took me less than 2 hours and I have saved £480 in accountancy fees. It seemed to be very straightforward. Fingers crossed!

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305672

Postby Laughton » May 4th, 2020, 6:28 pm

Good for you langley59.

Just think of it as being paid £240 per hour. Not bad going, especially in the current climate.

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305680

Postby fca2019 » May 4th, 2020, 7:28 pm

Glad it's sorted. Good info on the thread.

langley59
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305685

Postby langley59 » May 4th, 2020, 8:39 pm

Laughton wrote:Just think of it as being paid £240 per hour. Not bad going, especially in the current climate.

Don't say that, they'll want to tax me on it!

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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305918

Postby Charlottesquare » May 5th, 2020, 9:09 pm

One point, but it may not be relevant, you mention non performing loans, I assume these are loans the company has made to A N Others?

If this is the case were they loans to participators coming within s455 and was tax paid to HMRC re said loans? Regarding these, if family of the shareholder/director have received loans these may also be "deemed" loans to participators.

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manual ... l/ctm60150

If the answer to this is yes, and the loans are slowly being repaid to the company, you may need to consider the reclaim process re the tax that ought to have already been paid to HMRC when the loans were made, see link;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... pators-l2p

If this does not apply please ignore, I am just flagging an easily missed process that is sometimes needed when some loans are repaid to companies.

langley59
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Re: Filing own company accounts

#305922

Postby langley59 » May 5th, 2020, 9:15 pm

Charlottesquare wrote:One point, but it may not be relevant, you mention non performing loans, I assume these are loans the company has made to A N Others?

If this is the case were they loans to participators coming within s455 and was tax paid to HMRC re said loans? Regarding these, if family of the shareholder/director have received loans these may also be "deemed" loans to participators.

https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manual ... l/ctm60150

If the answer to this is yes, and the loans are slowly being repaid to the company, you may need to consider the reclaim process re the tax that ought to have already been paid to HMRC when the loans were made, see link;

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... pators-l2p

If this does not apply please ignore, I am just flagging an easily missed process that is sometimes needed when some loans are repaid to companies.

No not loans to participators, unconnected third parties.


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