If you set up a limited company in the UK, your duties as a director include the preparation and filing of annual accounts and tax returns. Depending on your company profits and personal income, you will also be responsible for various taxes, including Corporation Tax, Income Tax, National Insurance, and tax on dividends. We’ll take a brief look at each of these obligations below.
You must report the company’s financial activities to HMRC and Companies House each year by preparing and filing annual accounts .
Accounts for Companies House
You must prepare a Company Tax Return for HMRC on an annual basis, even if your business makes a loss and/or has no Corporation Tax to pay. This tax return must include full statutory accounts.
Your Company Tax Return is used to work out and report profit or loss for Corporation Tax and to calculate how much Corporation Tax (if any) the business owes.
It must be delivered to HMRC online no later than 12 months after the end of the company’s accounting period for Corporation Tax.
If you operate through a limited company, you have to register for Corporation Tax within three months of starting to do business. The following rates of Corporation Tax will apply to the taxable profit your business generates:
HMRC will not send you a Corporation Tax bill . You’ll calculate and report the tax liability by referring to your accounting records and preparing a Company Tax Return.
If you owe any tax, it must reach HMRC 9 months and 1 day after the end of your Corporation Tax accounting period.
If no tax is owed, you must tell HMRC before the payment deadline by completing the ‘nil to pay’ form online, or completing and returning the payslip received from HMRC, marking it ‘NIL due’
Self Assessment is the system that you’ll use to report and pay personal tax on untaxed earnings (e.g. dividend payments , expenses and taxable benefits, director’s loans ) that you receive from the company.
Your director’s salary will be paid and taxed through PAYE, but you will have to register for Self Assessment and prepare a personal tax return if you receive additional income that is not taxed ‘at source’.
The Self Assessment filing and payment deadlines for the 2026/27 tax year (6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027) are:
You will notice that all of these deadlines fall many months after the end of the tax year. That gives you plenty of time to prepare your tax return and pay what you owe.
In addition to the annual filings and tax returns mentioned above, you must deliver a confirmation statement to Companies House at least once every 12 months. This document confirms key information about the company.
If your company’s VAT taxable turnover goes over the VAT registration threshold of £90,000 in a rolling 12-month period, you must register for VAT with HMRC.
If you plan to pay yourself a director’s salary and/or hire employees, your company must be registered for PAYE with HMRC. This system is used to collect tax from wages and send payroll reports to HMRC.