Setting up a limited company, and surviving your first year
Incorporating takes a few hours and costs very little. What follows is a set of deadlines arriving at odd intervals over the next two years, none of them obvious and most of them carrying penalties.
This is the page we wish every new director had read in week one.
Your first-year calendar
- Straight away
Identity verification at Companies House for every director and person with significant control. Compulsory since 18 November 2025.
- Within 3 months
Register with HMRC for corporation tax.
- About 12 months
Your first confirmation statement — due within 14 days of your review period ending. £50 online.
- 12 months
Your accounting reference date. The end of your first financial year, defaulting to the end of the month you incorporated.
- 21 months
Your first set of accounts is due at Companies House.
- 21 months and 1 day
Your first corporation tax payment is due to HMRC.
- 24 months
Your first corporation tax return is due.
Identity verification — the one that is live right now
Since November 2025 every new director and person with significant control must verify their identity with Companies House, and existing directors must confirm they have done it when they file their next confirmation statement.
Most people should do this themselves, free, through GOV.UK One Login — and we say so plainly on our identity verification page. If that is not going to work for you, Moin is an Authorised Corporate Service Provider and can do it on your behalf.
Decisions worth getting right at the start
Each of these is easy to set now and awkward to change later.
Your year end
It defaults to the end of the month you incorporated. There are good reasons to align it with how your trade actually flows instead.
Salary and dividends
The split that works depends on your other income — and the dividend rates rose on 6 April 2026 to 10.75% and 35.75%.
Your registered office
It is on the public register permanently. Using your home address means exactly that.
VAT
You may not need to register yet. You may want to anyway, if you sell to other VAT-registered businesses.
Records from day one
Reconstructing a year of bank transactions in month eleven costs more than doing it as you go. Every time.
Who the directors and PSCs are
Get this right at incorporation. Changing it later means filings, and each one needs verified identities.
Already formed and drifting? Most of the first-year companies we take on come to us because a letter arrived and they were not sure whether it mattered. Bring the letter — that is a perfectly good reason to call.
Schedule a 20 min Free Review with me.
I offer a review, not a sales call — which may or may not lead anywhere. Most people come away with two or three things worth far more than twenty minutes.
What we cover
- 01Every date your new company has to hit
- 02Whether to verify your identity yourself or have it done
- 03Your year end, and whether the default one suits you