New Year’s Resolution: to file company accounts on time
Last year, Companies House issued a record amount of fines for the late filing of company accounts. In the year 2023/24, Companies House issued fines totaling £34.4m to private companies filing seriously late for two consecutive years; an increase of over £20m from 2019/20. The number of companies fined for repeatedly filing more than six months late also significantly increased, from 3,418 in 2019/20 to 11,463 in 2023/24.
According to the FT article quoted below, this increase is, in part, due to numerous companies facing financial difficulties, which stem from the COVID pandemic, slow economic growth and higher costs. As a result, such companies have been unable to satisfy their auditors that they have the “financial strength to stay afloat as a “going concern””.
Another reason mooted for the increase is the number of “ghost companies” set up during the pandemic to take advantage of the government’s bounce back loans; companies which presumably had no intention of ever filing accounts whether on time or not. Even the wildest optimist is unlikely to expect any fines issued to those “ghost companies” to be repaid.
Filing your company accounts may not be the most exciting commercial venture that you embark on this year, but with fines for private companies ranging from £150 (for accounts filed less than one month late) to £3,000 (for accounts filed more than six months late in two consecutive financial years), it’s not something that should be moved down your to do list. It should also be remembered that the coming into force of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 (ECCTA) has given Companies House far greater powers than it had wielded previously. To enable Companies House to fully utilise such powers, the coming years are likely to see an increase to its resources and, I expect, an increase in its clamping down of non-compliant companies.
If you have any questions about any of your filing obligations or about the changes being brought in by ECCTA, please get in touch with your usual Forsters’ contact or any member of our Corporate team.
Subcribe to news and viewsFigures produced by Companies House show that a record £34.4mn of fines were issued in 2023-24 to private companies filing seriously late two years in a row, up from £10.2mn in 2019-20
https://www.ft.com/content/1d6a7d0b-1761-49c8-8c90-ef6bd4d3ef4d
