Annual return – 28 days after your incorporation anniversary
Your annual return is a much simpler document than the year end accounts. It is essentially a confirmation that your company name, registered office, director and shareholder’s details are the same. It doesn’t take very long to do and can be completed online. It costs £15 to complete.
It has to be completed annually. Just before the anniversary date of your original incorporation date, you get issued with a letter requesting you to complete the annual return within 28 days of the incorporation anniversary date. So in the example above, this annual return would be by 6 July 2016.
The request letter that Companies House is bizarrely over the top, threatening you with a £5,000 fine and dire consequences if you don’t complete the annual return. I guess someone at Companies House must have had a bad day when they drafted the letter because it truly is a very scary looking. However, I have personally never known anybody fined £5,000 for late submission of an annual return when in contrast, the letter to complete the year end accounts is much more serene and I have rarely known anybody NOT to have to pay a fine if they submit the year end accounts.
