Companies House Late Filing Penalties: Amounts, Appeals and How to Avoid Them

Every company on the UK register must deliver its annual accounts to Companies House by a fixed date. Miss that date — even by one day — and the law imposes an automatic penalty. There is no reminder period, no grace day, and no negotiation over the amount: the fine is fixed purely by how late the accounts arrive.

Penalties start at £150 for a private company and rise to £1,500 if you are more than six months late. File late in two consecutive financial years and the penalty is doubled. For public companies, the top band is £7,500.

This guide explains exactly how Companies House late filing penalties work: the amounts, how the clock is measured, how they differ from HMRC penalties, whether an appeal has any chance of success, and what happens if a penalty goes unpaid.

A late filing penalty is measured from the date your accounts were due, so everything depends on knowing that date precisely.

Subsequent (normal) accounts

• Private companies and LLPs — 9 months from the end of the accounting reference period.
• Public companies — 6 months from the end of the accounting reference period.

First accounts covering more than 12 months

• Private companies and LLPs — 21 months from the date of incorporation, or 3 months from the accounting reference date, whichever is longer.
• Public companies — 18 months from the date of incorporation, or 3 months from the accounting reference date, whichever is longer.

The penalty level depends solely on how late the accounts reach Companies House. It is not scaled by the size of the company, its profits, or whether it traded at all.

Private companies and LLPs

Public companies

Because the bands step up sharply, a few days can be expensive. Accounts that are 4 weeks late cost a private company £150; at 5 weeks the same accounts cost £375.

For financial years beginning on or after 6 April 2008, the late filing penalty is doubled where a company files its accounts late in two successive financial years.

So a private company that is two months late in both of two consecutive years pays £375 for the first year and £750 for the second. A private company more than six months late twice in a row pays £3,000 for the second year.

This is the detail that catches most companies out. In the words of the official guidance, delivery means actual receipt at Companies House in the correct format. What counts is not the date you approved or signed the accounts, and not the date you posted them.

Two consequences follow:

• Posting is not filing. Companies House is explicit that first class post does not guarantee next day delivery. If the envelope arrives after the deadline, the penalty applies.
• Rejected accounts have not been delivered. If your submission is rejected — unsigned balance sheet, wrong accounting period, missing statements, incorrect format — the accounts are treated as never having arrived. The clock keeps running until an acceptable set is received, and a rejection close to the deadline can easily push you into a higher penalty band.

Filing electronically removes both risks: submission is instant, and you get an acceptance or rejection back quickly enough to correct and resubmit.

Your company has two annual filing obligations, with two different deadlines, two different recipients and two entirely separate penalty regimes. Filing one on time does nothing to protect you on the other.

• Companies House — annual accounts, due 9 months after the period end for a private company. Penalties as set out above, charged against the company automatically.
• HMRC — the Company Tax Return (CT600) with accounts and computations, due 12 months after the end of the accounting period. Corporation Tax itself is payable earlier, 9 months and 1 day after the period end.

HMRC's own late filing penalties begin at £100, with a further £100 once the return is 3 months late. Those flat penalties increase to £500 each where a return is filed late for three consecutive periods. Beyond 6 months HMRC estimates the tax and adds 10% of the unpaid amount, rising to 20% after 12 months. Late payment of the tax attracts interest separately.

For the full picture on the HMRC side, see our guide to Corporation Tax deadlines and penalties.

The automatic penalty is a civil charge against the company. It is not the only exposure.

Failing to file accounts or a confirmation statement is a criminal offence, and directors — or designated members of an LLP — can be prosecuted and personally fined in the criminal courts. Any such proceedings are separate from, and in addition to, the late filing penalty issued against the company.

Persistent failure to file also invites the registrar to begin compulsory strike-off action, which can lead to the company being dissolved and its assets passing to the Crown. Late filings remain visible on the public register too, which lenders, suppliers and credit reference agencies routinely check.

You can appeal, but you should be realistic about the odds. The registrar has very limited discretion not to collect a penalty, and an appeal only succeeds where the circumstances are genuinely exceptional — for example an unforeseen event at a critical moment, such as a fire destroying the company's records days before the deadline.

Companies House states that an appeal is unlikely to succeed if it rests on any of these grounds alone:

• Your company is dormant.
• You cannot afford to pay.
• Your accountant was ill.
• You relied on your accountant.
• These were your first accounts.
• You were not familiar with the filing requirements.
• The company or its directors are in financial difficulty, including bankruptcy.
• The accounts were delayed or lost in the post.
• The directors or LLP members live, or were travelling, overseas.
• Another director or member was responsible for preparing the accounts.

Note the first item in particular: being dormant is not a defence. A dormant company must still file dormant accounts on time, and is penalised on exactly the same scale if it does not. See our guide to dormant company accounts.

If your appeal is rejected

You can escalate to the Senior Casework Unit. If they also uphold the penalty, you can ask the Independent Adjudicators to review the case. Put your appeal in writing, explain the exceptional circumstances, and attach supporting evidence — the stronger the documentation, the better the prospects.

You will receive a penalty invoice once the accounts are filed late. Payment options are:

• Online — usually available where the penalty was incurred on or after 30 March 2020.
• Bank transfer or cheque — using the details and reference on the penalty notice. Always quote the reference, or the payment may not be matched to your company.
• Monthly instalments — if paying immediately would be difficult, you can contact Companies House to request payment by instalments over a short period, explaining why you cannot pay in full now.

Companies House pursues unpaid penalties. If a penalty is left outstanding, the case is passed to its debt collection agencies — Bluestone Credit Management, BPO and CCSCollect.

From there the debt can be taken to the County Court, or the Sheriff Court in Scotland. If the court finds in Companies House's favour, it may also seek to recover its legal costs from the company, so the final bill can be considerably more than the original penalty.

Sometimes, yes — but only before the deadline has passed.

• Apply for more time. If something beyond your control will prevent you filing on time, you can apply to Companies House to extend the deadline, setting out the reason. The application must be made before the existing deadline expires.
• Change your accounting reference date. Shortening or lengthening your accounting reference period moves your filing deadline, but lengthening is restricted: a period cannot exceed 18 months, and you normally cannot extend more than once in five years.

Once the deadline has gone, there is nothing to extend. A penalty already incurred cannot be removed by changing your accounting dates afterwards.

Late filing is almost always a process failure rather than a cash flow problem. A few habits eliminate it:

1. Confirm the real deadline from the public register rather than relying on memory or a spreadsheet, and diarise it with reminders at three months and one month out.
2. Treat the deadline as two weeks earlier than it is. That buffer is what absorbs a rejection or a last-minute query.
3. File online, never by post. Electronic filing is received the moment you submit it, and rejections come back fast enough to fix.
4. Get the format right first time — correct period, correct account type, balance sheet statements present and the accounts approved by the board.
5. File dormant accounts on the same discipline as trading accounts. No activity does not mean no obligation.
6. Never let two consecutive years slip, since the second one costs double.

WeFile is built to make the deadline a non-event. Your accounting reference dates come directly from the Companies House register, so you file against the correct period every time. The wizard produces a compliant set of accounts in iXBRL from the figures you enter, calculates your Corporation Tax automatically, and submits to both Companies House and HMRC — with the acceptance or rejection reported back to you straight away, while there is still time to act.

Micro-entity, small, full and dormant accounts are all supported, and your submission history is retained so you can prove exactly what was delivered and when.

Log in to WeFile to file your accounts, or read more about how to file your CT600.

This article summarises the Companies House guidance on late filing penalties for general information and is not a substitute for professional advice on your company's specific circumstances.