The tax inspectors cometh (via post)

Crossbone systems was formed electronically with Companies House on the 21st of November, 2007. Using myself as the example, the dates on documents I have received indicate that it takes only two days for HM Revenue & Customs to receive notice that the company has been formed. Pretty impressive when it can take up to 4 weeks just to get a passport approved by other government departments.

Your first corporate letter from the Inland Revenue is very much a meet & greet affair. They want to get to know you a little before they start coming on strong and demanding ‘returns’ later in the year. They send you a charmingly named Corporation Tax New Company Details form. It basically requests the following:

1. Are you actually trading yet? (so will you be owing them tax any time soon)
2. Who is actually directing your company? (so Companies House don’t really tell them very much after all)
3. Can you be bothered to answer these questions (and more) yourself?

The last point is important, because this is the stage where you can nominate someone else to take care of all this tax-related drudge work for you. hoorah!

The good news is that they’re not demanding the form be returned for a fair while. It must be returned three months from the beginning of the first accounting period. In laymens terms, that means that once you take money on behalf of your company, you must return the Corporation Tax New Company Details form no more than two months after the end of that month. So if I make my first transaction at any point in December, I better make sure the Revenue have my completed form by the end of February or there are some serious fines to be had.

There are also decisions to be made in regard to the dates that the official corporate accounts will be prepared for. This is an area I’m not too familiar with so I’m going to do more research and write up more when I’m better informed.

Back to bank

I’m a little surprised as to how long it is taking to actually process my banking application forms. I’ll be chasing that down at the beginning of next week. Once my account is opened and ready for business, then with any luck I’ll be able to actually start taking my own advice and get hold of an accountant.

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