Keeping HMG at bay

Our little company doesn't take a lot of work to administer but once a year I have to spend a day doing the accounts and the annual return and today was the day. To be honest it's getting easier with each passing year.

For a start I've been doing it for a few years now so preparing the accounts normally only takes me a couple of hours, especially now I've worked out how to depreciate our capital assets correctly. This year's quirk was that the trial balance ... errr ... didn't. But a bit of searching using binary chop found the error quickly enough.

Once I've got the accounts worked out and I know what profit we've made the rest is easy. The CT600 Corporation Tax return you can now do online and it works out what you owe for you (the bit where it works out the amount for the two parts of the year is particularly handy if, as happened this year, Corporation Tax changed part way through the year). You can then pay any tax you owe via bank transfer and as we've got electronic banking I did that online.

You can also do the annual return online now, so that's another cakewalk and they just take the £15 off your credit card at the end of it (and thereby hangs a tale in itself, as my most commented posting here reveals).

That then just leaves you with a trip to the post office to post the accounts to Companies House.

Cool.

So a good day, although I would have preferred to have been doing some programming.