CT600 Filing where accounting period is more than 12 months

When a company is incorporated, its incorporation date will be on the day the company was applied to the Companies House Register. If you want to extend your first year you can do so up to 18 months. However even if you do not choose to extend your first year, unless your incorporation date was on the first day of the month, Companies house will set the end date to 12 months + days to the end of the anniversary month, you will then have what as known as an extended year, so your first year accounts will be slightly longer than 12 months.

For example if you incorporated on the 11th July 2021 , Companies House will move your end date to the 31st July 2022. This will then become your Accounting Reference Date (ARD).

This raises a reporting anomaly. HMRC require a Corporation Tax return (CT600) after the end of the accounting period. But as a CT600 can only report up to a maximum of 12 months, so you will need to file online two CT600's. Companies House however only require a single set of abbreviated Accounts that cover the whole (extended) period / extended year.

In the above example year you will would need to create a (HMRC) IXBRL Company Accounts filing for 7th July 2021 to the 31-July 2022 and a CT600 for the 7th July 2021 to the 6th July 2022 and a second CT600 for the 7th July 2022 to the 31st July 2022. You will need to attach the accounts that cover the extended period with either or both CT600 Filings.

Confused? The Steps below hopefully guide you through this situation.

Note: HMRC require full Accounts which includes a Profit and Loss Statement where Companies House only require the statutory declaration and the Balance Sheet.

Step 1 - Create two Corporation Tax CT600 Filings and a single IXBRL Company Accounts

You can either create the first CT600 and accounts using the QuickStart dialog which after selecting your company, Accounting period start date and company size (Micro or Small) - or alternatively create 2 CT600 filings and IXBRL accounts separately.

In both cases you should end up with 3 Filings in your blotter which will hopefully look like the below:

In this example the accounting year has been extended to cover the period 1st of June 2018 to 31st of December 2019. (19 months)

Note that the first CT600 accounting period starts on the 1st June 2018 and ends on the 31st May 2019 (12 months). The second CT600 starts on the 1st June 2019 and ends on the 31 December 2019 (7 months).

The IXBRL accounts can cover the entire extended accounting period (in our example 1st of June 2019 to 31st of December 2019.) - which makes the filing slightly easier.

Step 2 - The first CT600 return (in our example the first 12 months)

The primary question here is normally "what to enter for turnover in CT600 when accounting year is more than 12 months"?
It's up to you to decide how your attribute your turnover and income across the 2 periods - however generally your records / accounting system should be able to provide what income and expenditure you had for each.

When you are completing the CT600, in the declaration section you will need to allocate the IXBRL accounts that you have created. Note that Box 80 is set to YES; Box 85 is set to NO, and; Box 90 is set to Not applicable. With box 91A being set to the IXBRL Company Accounts. Note: if you have supplied your own IXBRL accounts you can select to upload them in the drop-down menu in box 91A.

Step 3 - Your second CT600 return / the extended period

In your second CT600 return you do not need to attach the IXBRL accounts as they cover the entire period and therefore only need to be attached once. This tells HMRC that you have already attached accounts, in the declaration section of your second return set Boxes 80 & 85 to NO and in the reason drop-down list set the reason to 'Submitted with separate return' Once you have done this and set both CT600 returns to ready for filing along with the IXBRL Accounts Filing you are will be able to submit both CT600 to HMRC.
You can attach your accounts to both CT600 returns, if you like as it makes no difference, but they must be attached to one of them.

Note: Although in this example we had the longer period (the 12 month period) first, it actually makes no difference and therefore you could have the shorter period for the first CT600.

Step 4 - Make your submission to HMRC

Once you have completed your returns and completed the above you will now be able to submit and file online. You can submit your filings in any order, normally though the CT600 return with the accounts attached is sent first. If you get a rejection errors it better to deal with this first. Once you have submitted both (and hopefully accepted), you will receive emails from EasyDigitalFiling with your IRMark (digital hash) and later (possibly 4-12 hours) an email from HMRC.

Step 5 - Make your submission to Companies House

When I first wrote this article, we did not submit to Companies House, but due to popular demand we built out to the Companies House interface and you can now also create a Companies House Submission which will fillet (remove the Profit and Loss statement) from your HMRC IXBRL accounts, and add the Companies House IXBRL Taxonomy (yes - Companies House have different IXBRL Tags to HMRC). You can then file with a click direct and file online to Companies House. For Micro Limited Companies you can do this through the Companies House web site for free, however, as you will have already made the accounts up on the platform for HMRC, we hope that being able to do this automatically will save you time, ensure accuracy and consistency with what is filed with HMRC, and have all your Accounts filings in one place. If you have already paid, please ask us for an upgrade code for this additional filing.