Companies House has advised that their workload is so great at present that they are delaying penalty reviews, and are suspending any associated recovery action until such times as your appeal has been considered.
This was announced last week on the back of the VAT office advising Agents that they were no longer answering the phone on a Friday due to a backlog of paperwork and work which they need to respond to.
Interestingly, they blamed this excess amount of work not just on staff shortages, but on their working from home policy!!
Now surely, if jobs can’t be done effectively from home, team members should get back into the office?? After all, neither HMRC nor Companies House would accept ‘working from home’ as a valid excuse for missing a year end accounts or corporation tax return filing deadline, or for not managing to pay and outstanding VAT or self assessment tax liability??
Companies House has also said that due to staff primarily working remotely, they are unable to take any credit card payments over the phone, but that payments by instalment can be requested online. Not a lot of help to some of our less tech savvy clientele who would prefer to make a card payment over the phone now that they are no longer allowed to pay by cheque!
I’m sure one of the first rules of business is ‘making it easy to buy’???
Funny, isn’t it, that while HMRC and Companies House are pushing all clients down a digital route, they themselves fall very short as concerns their own digitisation.
If you think you aren’t going to be able to file your limited company accounts in advance of your deadline, please be aware that the penalties are applied automatically as follows:
| Length of lateness (from filing deadline) | Penalty for Ltd Co or LLP |
| Not more than one month | £150 |
| More than one month, but not more than three months | £375 |
| More than three months, but not more than six months | £750 |
| More than six months | £1,500 |
If you file your accounts late in two successive financial years, these penalties are doubled.
And should you have an outstanding tax liability interest will also be charged on late payment.
There are changes coming to the way VAT and Personal Self Assessment penalties are calculated – more on this to follow.
If you have any questions relating to this or other subjects, or if you would like us to provide you with a quote to prepare and submit your year end accounts and corporation tax returns in good time, and make sure you do not incur any penalties, then please drop us a line or give us a call and the team will be happy to help ????
For self assessment:
https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns/penalties
For limited company accounts from Companies House:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/late-filing-penalties/late-filing-penalties
For VAT and changes to ITSA (Income Tax Self Assessment):
For PAYE and NI:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/what-happens-if-you-dont-pay-paye-and-national-insurance-on-time
