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Fine points of filing

Everyone knows that if a company is entitled to an extended Companies House filing deadline, the same extension is applied for Corporation Tax filing. Historically, this has perhaps most often applied where a company has overseas interests, where a three-month extension has been available on demand (though of course this has not applied since 1 January 2005).

What may be overlooked (at least, in our experience, by HMRC) is that overseas interests were not the only circumstance in which this applied. The same thing can happen where a company shortens its accounting period. The filing date in such circumstances cannot be less than three months after the date on which the form 225 shortening the accounting reference period is filed at Companies House: and, as we have said, this extension applies for Corporation Tax as well as for Companies House purposes.

For example, in a recent case here the ARD was brought forward from 31 July to 31 March 2007 and accounts filed (both at Companies House and with HMRC) on 1 June 2008. The CT late filing penalty that would on the face of it be due falls away because filing the 225 on 10 March 2008 extends the filing date to 10 June 2008.

We have sent HMRC our invoice for training their staff...