Accounting dates help

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Laura8192
Laura8192 Registered Posts: 95 Epic contributor 🐘
in General accounting discussion
I have a new client who created his Limited Company himself. All my other clients were already established when I took them over, so the first year dates are really confusing me!


Incorporated 12/08/2013.

On the Companies House website, it says his accounting reference date is 31/08. It says next accounts due 12/05/2015.

Then I have a letter from Corporation tax,
Accounting period End date 01/04/2014
Pay corp tax by 02/01/2015
Deliver company tax return by 01/04/2015.

So I understand that corp tax cannot be for longer than a year, but I thought that the date for the corp tax would be 12/08/2014, and I'd have to do another return for the 19 or so days up to 31/08/2014?

Can I just change the CT date and what should I change it to?

Thank you.
Laura

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  • Anne Boleyn
    Anne Boleyn Registered Posts: 196 Dedicated contributor 🦉
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    Hi Laura

    The incorporation date is literally the date of incorporation.

    Companies House accounting reference date automatically defaults to the end of the month in which it incorporated.

    If I remember right the first set of accounts must be filed within the first 21 months after incorporation. Which is why they have the date 12/05/15.

    If you mean a letter from the Corporation Tax Office then someone must have filled in a form which told them that they were going to make accounts up to the 1st of April 14 which would explain why you have that date.

    You have 9 months to pay any corporation tax due but you have to file the CT600 within 12 months.

    A corporation tax return (CT600) cannot cover a period of more than a year.

    The year end dates can be changed but only under instruction from your client. You need to find out what accounting year end your client wants and to amend with Companies House and HMRC accordingly.

    Has your client begun to trade yet? As an example incorporated on 12/08/13 and began trading straightaway. Chooses 31/3 as year end . You can prepare accounts to 31/03/14 , about 7 months and you would also prepare a CT600 with those dates as well. Unfortunately you can't make them to 31/3/15 as this would be greater than 18 months. However you can chose a different year end.

    I can't think of anything else at the moment.

    Hope this helps.

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