About File Company

File Company is a plain-English guide to UK company filings — your annual accounts to Companies House, your Company Tax Return to HMRC, and the deadlines around both. It's written and run by Carr Accounting Studio, a London firm of Chartered Accountants (ICAEW).

David Carr

Chartered Accountant (ACA, ICAEW) · Founder, Carr Accounting Studio

David writes and signs off the guides on this site. He prepares and files company accounts and CT600s for clients through the firm, so the guidance here comes from filings that actually go in — not from summarising other people's blog posts. Before founding the firm his background was in building software, and he still builds today — including the tools on this site.

Why this site exists

Filing accounts and a tax return is a job most directors meet once a year, under a deadline, in language written for specialists. And the free routes are narrowing: the joint accounts-and-tax-return filing service closed in March 2026, and from April 2028 accounts must be filed through software. More people are doing this themselves with less help than before.

File Company exists to give those people straight answers: who must file, when it's due, what lateness costs, and how to do it yourself. If you read a guide here and file on your own, that's the site doing its job.

Plain English, checked figures

Every guide is written to be read by the person doing the filing, not by another accountant. Where a term has to appear because HMRC or Companies House use it, we explain it the first time.

The figures — deadlines, penalty bands, thresholds — are checked against GOV.UK and Companies House sources by the firm before they're published, and each guide shows the date it was last updated. When the rules change, the pages change.

What this site isn't

The guides are general information, not advice on your specific circumstances — reading them doesn't make you a client of the firm. The detail is in our terms of use. If your situation is unusual, or the stakes feel high, get advice before you file.