Small private companies with a year end of 30 April 2016 and into their second or later year of existence should submit their accounts to Companies House by 31 January 2017 in order to avoid a Late Filing Penalty.

Any corporation tax for small companies with a 30 April 2016 year end is due to be paid on 1 February 2017 in order to avoid Late Payment Interest, which is currently charged at 3%. Our clients will be e-mailed a payment advice giving customised electronic payment details. This advice is pale blue in colour like the corporation tax form CT600. This is a service which is special to us, because we believe in having a Unique Selling Proposition, or at least a distinctive product. It is possible that one or two of our competitors will be able to copy what we do, but most will not.

New small private companies in their first year of existence have a deadline for submitting the accounts which is usually slightly shorter than this unless they have changed their year end, in which case it may be considerably shorter. They can look on the Companies House website to determine their deadline, but their accountant may have warned them already.

If you miss this deadline then we advise you to get your accounts drawn up and submitted as soon as possible in order to avoid further penalties. The need to be able to produce a set of accounts at high speed is one of our motives in taking an interest in new technology.

If you are over the deadline, there may be other problems such as with s455 tax and P11D returns. We can only point out that leaving things to the last minute and beyond can often turn out to be expensive, and you should see an accountant and corporation tax agent as quickly as possible.