Six dates that run your company year

The compliance year sounds complicated and mostly isn’t. For an owner-managed limited company with a 31 December year end, it is really six dates. Put them in your calendar once and the year runs itself — or hand them to us and stop thinking about them.

The six

19 April — final payroll submission. The last Full Payment Submission of the tax year, which closes your payroll for the year just ended.

31 May — P60s to staff. Every employee on the payroll at 5 April gets a P60. It’s a small job with a fixed deadline and a penalty for lateness.

7 July — VAT return, April to June. The first VAT quarter of the calendar year is due, filed digitally under Making Tax Digital.

31 July — second payment on account. If the director is in self-assessment, the second instalment of last year’s tax falls due now, not in January.

30 September — accounts at Companies House. For a 31 December year end, your statutory accounts must be filed nine months after the period end.

31 January — self-assessment. The one everyone means when they say “the tax deadline”: the personal return and any balancing payment.

Why the order matters

Notice that the year doesn’t start in January. The dates that catch people out are the quiet ones — the 31 May P60s, the 31 July payment on account — because they arrive when nobody is thinking about tax. A good accountant’s real product is not the filing itself; it’s that you never had to remember the date.

None of this is difficult. It is only relentless, which is exactly the kind of thing worth handing to someone whose job is to be exact about it.