Do I need an accountant in my first year of trading?

Not legally, no. But your first year is when the most deadlines land for the first time, registering for Corporation Tax, PAYE if relevant, working out whether to register for VAT, and getting your bookkeeping set up properly. Getting an accountant involved early, even just for a discovery call, tends to save far more than it costs.

What happens if I miss the Confirmation Statement deadline?

Companies House can eventually strike the company off the register if it isn't filed, which is a serious outcome for a business you've only just set up. It's a short, simple filing, but it's easy to lose track of if nobody is watching the date for you.

Should I register for VAT before I hit the £90,000 threshold?

It depends who your clients are. If most of them are VAT-registered businesses, voluntary registration often makes sense because they can reclaim the VAT you charge. If your clients are mainly the public, adding VAT to your prices can make you less competitive. It's worth working through your own figures rather than following a general rule.

What's the actual difference between the Corporation Tax payment deadline and the CT600 filing deadline?

The tax itself is due 9 months and 1 day after your accounting period ends. The Company Tax Return, the CT600, isn't due until 12 months after that same year end. It's a common trap because the payment comes due three months before the paperwork does.

Limited Company Year One: What Actually Needs Doing

I meet a lot of directors in their first few weeks of trading who assumed that once Companies House confirmed the incorporation, the hard part was done. It isn't. Incorporation is the easy bit. Year one is where the actual obligations start, and most of them arrive quietly, with no reminder letter and a penalty attached if you miss them. This is the calendar I'd want if I were starting out again.

Incorporation itself

Registering the company at Companies House is straightforward: a company name, a registered office address, at least one director, and details of the people with significant control. You'll get a certificate of incorporation and a company number within a day, usually within hours if you go online. That's the beginning of the story, not the end of it.

Register for Corporation Tax within three months of trading

Once the company starts trading, you have three months to register for Corporation Tax with HMRC. Trading doesn't just mean invoicing a client. Buying stock, paying for a website, or taking on premises can all count as the start of trading, so I'd rather a client registered a little early than missed the window. HMRC issues the notice, you register online, and it's genuinely a five-minute job. Leaving it is the part that costs money.

Open a separate business bank account

A limited company is a separate legal person from you, and its money needs to be kept separate too. Mixing personal and business spending in one account doesn't just make bookkeeping miserable, it makes it much harder to prove what's a legitimate business expense if HMRC ever asks. Open the account before your first invoice goes out, not after your first VAT return.

Get your bookkeeping habits right from day one

The single biggest difference between a stress-free year end and a chaotic one is whether records were kept as you went along or reconstructed from memory in month eleven. Keep every receipt, log expenses weekly rather than quarterly, and use software that reconciles against your bank feed rather than a shoebox and a spreadsheet you update once a year. I'd rather spend an hour with a new client setting this up properly in month one than spend a week unpicking it in month twelve.

VAT: the threshold and the voluntary option

You must register for VAT once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling twelve-month period, not just your accounting year. Some new companies choose to register voluntarily well before that, particularly if most of their clients are VAT-registered businesses who can reclaim the VAT anyway, or if the company is spending heavily on VAT-able costs early on and wants to reclaim it. Whether voluntary registration helps or hurts you depends entirely on who your clients are and what you're buying. It's worth a proper conversation rather than a guess.

PAYE, if you're taking a salary or hiring

If you plan to pay yourself a salary through the company, or you take on your first employee, you need to register as an employer and run PAYE. This is also where the salary-versus-dividends decision comes in, because most director-shareholders pay themselves a mix of a modest salary and dividends rather than a salary alone, for reasons that come down to tax efficiency and National Insurance. I built a salary vs dividends calculator so you can see the trade-offs for your own numbers rather than relying on a rule of thumb that might not fit your situation.

The Confirmation Statement

Once a year, every company has to file a Confirmation Statement with Companies House, essentially confirming that the details held on the public register, directors, registered office, shareholders, are still accurate, or updating them if not. It's due annually and there's a small filing fee. It is not the same thing as your accounts, and I still meet directors who confuse the two. Missing it can lead to the company being struck off, which is a genuinely bad way to lose a business you've only just started.

Your first annual accounts and Corporation Tax return

This is where the deadlines get a little unusual for a first year, and it's worth having them written down somewhere rather than trusting memory. Your first set of statutory accounts is normally due at Companies House 21 months after the date of incorporation. After that first filing, the pattern settles into something simpler: accounts due 9 months after your company's year end, every year going forward.

Corporation Tax works on a different clock entirely. Your Company Tax Return, the CT600, is due to HMRC 12 months after the end of your accounting period. But the tax itself has to be paid earlier than that, 9 months and 1 day after the end of the accounting period. It catches people out because the payment deadline lands three months before the return deadline. I do not wait until month eleven to work out what a client owes. I want the number known well before it's due, so there are no surprises and no scrambling.

Where this fits with what I actually do

Every one of these deadlines is filed correctly and on time as a matter of course when you work with me. What I care about more is that you understand why they exist and what the numbers behind them mean for your decisions, not just that a form went in. That's the difference between a return being filed and a return being explained. About a third of the clients I work with are brand-new start-ups taking me on from day one, so if you're weighing up whether to bring in an accountant now or wait until it feels urgent, have a look at how I work with start-ups from incorporation onward.

If you've just incorporated, or you're about to, I offer a free discovery call with no pressure attached. You can book a time that suits you, or email me directly at daneon@dfaccounting.co.uk if you'd rather start there. Either way, I'd rather help you get year one right from the start than help you fix it afterwards.

Setting up a limited company: what needs to happen in year one