The Accounts the Law Makes You Produce
Statutory accounts are the set of year-end accounts a UK limited company is legally required to prepare. The word "statutory" just means the requirement comes from statute, in this case Part 15 of the Companies Act 2006. You will also hear them called annual accounts, year-end accounts, company accounts or financial statements. They are all the same document.
Every limited company has to produce them every year. That includes companies that made a loss, companies that did not trade, and companies whose director is also the only shareholder and already knows the numbers. Limited liability partnerships have the same duty. Sole traders and ordinary partnerships do not, which is one of the real differences covered in our sole trader vs limited company guide.
Most directors think of statutory accounts as a form to get filed. We think that undersells them. They are the only financial information about your company that strangers can look up for free, and a lot of decisions about you get made from them without you ever being asked.
What Statutory Accounts Include
GOV.UK lists four things that statutory accounts must contain: a balance sheet, a profit and loss account, notes to the accounts, and a directors' report. How much detail each one needs depends on the size of the company.
| Micro-entity | Small company | Medium or large | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Size test (any two of three) | Turnover up to £1m, balance sheet total up to £500,000, up to 10 employees | Turnover up to £15m, balance sheet total up to £7.5m, up to 50 employees | Above the small limits |
| Balance sheet | Yes, in a fixed short format | Yes | Yes |
| Profit and loss account | Yes, in a fixed short format | Yes | Yes |
| Notes | A handful, at the foot of the balance sheet | Reduced set | Full set |
| Directors' report | Not required | Required | Required |
| Strategic report | Not required | Not required | Required |
| Cash flow statement | Not required | Not required | Required |
| Audit report | Not required | Usually exempt | Required |
| Accounting standard | FRS 105 | FRS 102 Section 1A | FRS 102 or IFRS |
Those size limits apply to financial years beginning on or after 6 April 2025. A lot of pages still quote the older, lower ones. If you want the detail, our guides to micro-entity accounts and audit thresholds go through each test.
Whatever the size, the accounts have to give a "true and fair view" of the company's position and its profit or loss. That phrase carries legal weight. Directors must not approve accounts unless they are satisfied it has been met.
One Set of Accounts, Three Audiences
This is the part that confuses people most. A small company prepares one set of statutory accounts, but three different readers receive it and they do not all see the same thing.
Your shareholders get the full accounts. A private company has to send them to every member no later than the date it files them at Companies House, or the filing deadline if that comes first. In an owner-managed company this step is often invisible, because the director and the shareholder are the same person, but the duty still exists.
HMRC gets the full accounts too, including the detailed profit and loss account. They are attached to the Company Tax Return (the CT600) in a tagged format called iXBRL, alongside a tax computation. HMRC uses them to check the corporation tax figure.
Companies House puts what it receives on the public register. A small company or micro-entity is allowed to leave the profit and loss account and the directors' report out of the copy it files there, as long as the balance sheet says so. Accountants call this filing "filleted" accounts. Most small companies do it, so what the public sees is a balance sheet and a few notes. Turnover and profit stay private.
So when a director tells us "our accounts are public", the accurate answer is usually "your balance sheet is". And when someone says "nobody sees our profit", that is true of the public and untrue of HMRC.
Statutory Accounts vs Management Accounts
These two get mixed up constantly. They are built from the same bookkeeping, but they do different jobs.
| Statutory accounts | Management accounts | |
|---|---|---|
| Required by law | Yes | No |
| How often | Once a year | Monthly or quarterly, whenever you want |
| Format | Fixed by the Companies Act and FRS 102 or FRS 105 | Whatever is useful to you |
| Who reads them | Shareholders, HMRC, Companies House, lenders, the public | Directors and managers |
| When they arrive | Up to nine months after the year end | Within a few weeks of the month end |
| What they are for | Reporting what happened | Deciding what to do next |
A company run only on its statutory accounts is being steered by looking at something that happened up to 21 months ago. Our guide to management accounting explains what the more useful version looks like.
The Profit in Your Accounts Is Not the Profit You Are Taxed On
Statutory accounts follow accounting rules. Corporation tax follows tax rules. The two overlap heavily but they are not the same, so the accounts profit has to be adjusted before tax is worked out.
Take a simple example. Brackley Design Ltd has a 31 March year end and no associated companies. Its statutory accounts show a profit before tax of £48,000.
| £ | |
|---|---|
| Profit before tax per the statutory accounts | 48,000 |
| Add back depreciation | 6,000 |
| Add back client entertaining | 1,200 |
| Deduct capital allowances | (9,500) |
| Taxable profit | 45,700 |
| Corporation tax at 19% | 8,683 |
The accounts say £48,000. The tax return says £45,700. Both are right. Depreciation is the company's own estimate of how fast its equipment wears out, so tax law ignores it and gives capital allowances instead. Entertaining is a real cost of the business but is not deductible for tax.
It matters because directors often use the accounts profit to guess the tax bill, or to decide how much they can take as a dividend. In a year with a large equipment purchase the gap between the two figures can be tens of thousands of pounds. You can test your own numbers in our corporation tax calculator, but put the taxable profit in, not the accounts profit.
Deadlines for Statutory Accounts
There are three dates to know and they fall in an awkward order.
| What | Deadline | For a 31 March 2026 year end |
|---|---|---|
| File accounts at Companies House (private company) | 9 months after the year end | 31 December 2026 |
| Pay corporation tax | 9 months and 1 day after the period ends | 1 January 2027 |
| File the Company Tax Return with HMRC | 12 months after the period ends | 31 March 2027 |
Look at the second and third rows together. The tax is due three months before the return that calculates it. You cannot know what to pay until the accounts and computation are finished, so in practice everything has to be done by month nine. The twelve month HMRC deadline is real, but treating it as your working deadline means paying an estimate and picking up interest if you guessed low. Our piece on late payment interest covers the current HMRC rates.
There is no minimum wait. You can file accounts the week after the year end if the books are ready. Companies that want to raise finance or pay a dividend with confidence often should.
First accounts are different
For a new company, the first accounts are due 21 months after the date of incorporation, or three months after the accounting reference date if that is later. It is counted from incorporation, not from the year end.
Suppose a company was incorporated on 15 May 2025. Companies House sets its first accounting reference date as 31 May 2026, the end of the month of its first anniversary. Its first accounts cover 15 May 2025 to 31 May 2026 and are due on 15 February 2027. That is eight and a half months after the period ends, not nine.
There is a second catch in the same example. That first period is longer than twelve months, and a corporation tax accounting period cannot be. So if the company traded from day one, one set of statutory accounts needs two Company Tax Returns: one for the twelve months to 14 May 2026 and one for the seventeen days after it. Each has its own payment date. New directors who file their own returns miss this more than almost anything else.
Missing the Companies House deadline brings an automatic penalty of £150 to £1,500 for a private company, doubled if you were late the year before. Our guide to Companies House late filing penalties explains how the bands work and how rarely appeals succeed.
Who Signs Them and Who Is Responsible
The directors are. An accountant can prepare the statutory accounts, but the board approves them and a director signs the balance sheet, with their name printed underneath. If the company is not being audited, the balance sheet also has to carry statements above that signature confirming the company is entitled to audit exemption, that the members have not asked for an audit, and that the directors acknowledge their responsibility for the accounts and the accounting records.
We mention this because of how accounts tend to get approved in real life, which is by replying "all fine, please file" to an email on a phone. The signature means the director has satisfied themselves the accounts are true and fair. Failing to file is a criminal offence for the directors personally, separate from the penalty on the company.
Before you approve a set, we would always read four things:
- The director's loan account. If it is overdrawn at the year end, there may be a tax charge on the company. See our director's loan account guide.
- The comparatives. Last year's figures should match what was filed last year. If they do not, ask why.
- Creditors due within one year. This is the number lenders and credit agencies look at first.
- Any suspense or "sundry" balance. A finished set of accounts should not have one. Our suspense account guide explains what they usually hide.
Dormant Companies Still File
A company with no transactions at all in the year still has to deliver accounts to Companies House. They are much shorter, a balance sheet with a dormant statement and no profit and loss account, but they are still statutory accounts with the same deadline and the same penalties. Our dormant company guide covers what counts as dormant, because the Companies House and HMRC definitions differ.
Accounts are also separate from the confirmation statement. That is a different annual filing with its own date and fee. Filing one does not cover the other.
What Changes in April 2028, and What No Longer Does
If you read about this before late October 2026, what you read is probably out of date.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 gave Companies House the power to change how accounts are filed. The plan, confirmed in June 2026, was that from 1 April 2028 every small company and micro-entity would have to file its profit and loss account, and abridged accounts would be abolished.
On 23 October 2026 the government paused that part. Acting on a recommendation from the Small Business Regulatory Taskforce, it said it will not bring in the profit and loss filing requirement in April 2028 while it looks at other ways to simplify filing, including joining up what companies send to Companies House and HMRC.
So from 1 April 2028:
- Small companies and micro-entities can still fillet their accounts. The profit and loss account can stay off the public register, as now.
- Abridged accounts stay available.
- Software only filing goes ahead. All accounts must be filed in iXBRL using commercial software. The Companies House web service and paper forms close for accounts, including for directors who file their own. Web filing carries on for other things, such as confirmation statements.
- A stronger audit exemption statement is required. Companies claiming exemption will have to name the exemption and confirm they qualify.
- The parts of the accounts must be filed together, not in separate submissions.
- Shortening an accounting period is restricted. A company will need a business reason to shorten its accounting reference period more than once in five years.
Our View
The pause is the right call, and the software rule is the change that will bite. Most of the commentary over the last two years was about profit figures going public. That has now gone away for the time being. What remains is that every company, including a dormant one with £1 of share capital, will need paid software or an agent to file its accounts. For directors who have used the free Companies House web form every year, that is the real cost of April 2028, and it has not moved.
"Tell government once" already existed. Until 31 March 2026 a small company could file its accounts with Companies House and HMRC in one free joint session. That service was closed. Seven months later, the stated reason for pausing the profit and loss reform is to explore sending information to both bodies once. We welcome the aim. We would also point out that small companies had a working version of it at the start of this year and now have none.
Do not plan around the pause being permanent. The power to require profit and loss filing is still in the Act. The government has paused the implementation, which is different from repealing it. If privacy over your trading figures is central to how you run the company, treat it as secure for now and review it when the alternatives are published.
Filing the minimum is a choice with a cost. Credit reference agencies score your company from the filed accounts. A filleted balance sheet with no turnover and no profit gives them very little, and the models default to caution. We have seen sound companies offered thin credit limits and asked for personal guarantees for exactly this reason. If you depend on supplier credit or expect to borrow, filing fuller accounts than the law requires can be worth more than the privacy.
Late accounts are almost always a bookkeeping problem. In our experience the accounts themselves are a few days' work. What takes months is finding missing bank statements, unexplained transactions and receipts from the previous spring. Companies that keep their bookkeeping up to date through the year get accounts in month two or three. Companies that do not get them in month nine, alongside the tax bill.
Common Mistakes
- Using the accounts profit to estimate corporation tax. Use the taxable profit after adjustments.
- Working to the HMRC twelve month deadline. The tax is due at nine months and one day.
- Counting nine months from the year end for first accounts. It is 21 months from incorporation.
- Assuming a dormant company has nothing to file. It does.
- Thinking the confirmation statement covers the accounts. They are separate filings.
- Approving accounts without reading them. The director who signs is responsible for them.
- Relying on pre-October 2026 guidance about April 2028. The profit and loss filing requirement has been paused. Software only filing has not.
How IAK Can Help
We prepare statutory accounts for limited companies and small businesses across North London and Hertfordshire. Our accounting team handles the year-end accounts, the corporation tax computation and return, and both filings, and we talk you through the figures before you sign anything.
Because the quality of the accounts depends on the records behind them, our bookkeeping and Xero support keeps the books reconciled through the year so the year end is quick. We already file through commercial software, so the April 2028 change will not affect how our clients' accounts are submitted. If you want numbers you can act on between year ends, we also produce management reports.
If your accounts are due, overdue, or you have been filing them yourself and are wondering what happens when the web service closes, get in touch for a free consultation.
Sources
- Accounts and tax returns for private limited companies, GOV.UK, for what statutory accounts must include and who they must be sent to.
- Prepare annual accounts for a private limited company: micro-entities, small and dormant companies, GOV.UK, for the micro-entity and small company size limits and what may be left out of the filed copy.
- Preparing and filing Companies House accounts, GOV.UK, for filing deadlines, first accounts, signing requirements, audit exemption statements and changes to the accounting reference date.
- Companies House update to accounts filing from April 2028, GOV.UK, the 23 October 2026 announcement pausing profit and loss filing for small companies and micro-entities and confirming software only filing.
- Companies Act 2006, Part 15, legislation.gov.uk, the legal requirement to prepare, approve, circulate and file annual accounts.