There is no legal requirement for a UK limited company to hire an accountant. Directors are allowed to keep their own bookkeeping records, prepare and file annual accounts with Companies House, and submit a Company Tax Return to HMRC themselves.
For some businesses, especially those with straightforward finances, this can be a practical and cost-effective option. However, the responsibility still sits with the directors, who must make sure the records are accurate, the returns are complete, and all deadlines are met.
A property limited company is often more complex than a standard trading business because the tax treatment of property income, finance costs, allowable expenses, and capital expenditure can be less straightforward.
On top of that, there are statutory accounts to prepare and, in some cases, additional rules such as ATED for certain higher-value residential properties held by companies. This means that while handling the accounts yourself is possible, errors can easily lead to missed reliefs, unnecessary tax payments, or penalties for incorrect filing. That is why many property company directors decide that professional support is worthwhile.
No Legal Requirement to Use an Accountant for Accounting limited Company
Let us be clear from the start: there is no statutory requirement for a limited company to appoint an accountant or have its accounts prepared by a qualified professional. The Companies Act 2006 sets out what your accounts must contain and when they must be filed. It says nothing about who must prepare them.
What the law does require is that the accounts are accurate, prepared in accordance with UK Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (UK GAAP) or International Financial Reporting Standards, and delivered on time. Whether you prepare them yourself or pay someone else to do so is entirely your decision.
That said, the law's flexibility on who prepares the accounts should not be mistaken for the task being simple. The requirements are precise, the deadlines carry automatic penalties, and for a property company, the tax calculations involve reliefs and obligations that are routinely missed even by experienced directors.
What Doing Your Own limited Company Accounts Actually Involves
Before deciding whether to do company accounts alone, it helps to understand what the full task looks like. Running a property limited company involves several distinct obligations that run on different timelines and go to different places.
Bookkeeping throughout the year
You need to record every transaction the company makes, including rental income, mortgage interest, maintenance costs, insurance, management fees, and any capital expenditure. Records must be kept for at least six years from the end of the accounting period they relate to. HMRC can and does request records during compliance checks, and incomplete or disorganised records significantly weaken your position.
Statutory accounts prepared to UK GAAP.
At the end of your financial year, the company must prepare statutory accounts using the appropriate UK accounting framework. These will generally include a balance sheet, notes to the accounts, and other supporting information, with the exact content depending on whether the company qualifies as a micro-entity or small company. Many smaller property companies may use FRS 105 if they qualify for the micro-entity’s regime, while others will prepare accounts under FRS 102. These frameworks contain specific rules on recognition, measurement, presentation, and disclosure.
Filing with Companies House within 9 months.
Your statutory accounts must reach Companies House within nine months of your accounting reference date (ARD), which is usually the end of your company's financial year. This deadline is fixed. Companies House will not grant an extension unless there are exceptional circumstances, and the definition of exceptional is narrower than most people assume.
Filing the CT600 with HMRC within 12 months.
Your Company Tax Return, filed on form CT600, must normally be submitted to HMRC within 12 months of the end of the accounting period. It must be filed online. The tax computations must be in iXBRL format, and, for most companies, the accounts included with the return must also be in iXBRL, although some exceptions allow accounts to be attached as a PDF. The return should include any reliefs, allowances, losses, and other tax adjustments that are relevant to the company’s position. Since 31 March 2026, companies generally need software to file the Company Tax Return online.
Paying Corporation Tax by 9 months and 1 day.
The payment deadline sits before the filing deadline. For a company with a year-end on 31 March 2025, the Corporation Tax payment is due by 1 January 2026, but the CT600 does not need to be filed until 31 March 2026. Many directors discover this timing mismatch the hard way.
VAT returns, if applicable.
If your property company’s taxable turnover exceeds the current VAT registration threshold of £90,000, it will usually need to register for VAT. VAT returns are usually filed quarterly, although some businesses use other VAT schemes. For most residential landlords, rental income is generally exempt from VAT, so registration is often not required on residential rents alone. Commercial property can be different, particularly where the company has opted to tax, in which case rent or sale proceeds may become taxable supplies for VAT purposes.
Payroll, if you pay a salary.
If the company pays you or any employees a salary, it must operate PAYE, deduct income tax and National Insurance, file Real Time Information (RTI) submissions to HMRC each time you run payroll, and submit an Employer Payment Summary where appropriate.
That is a substantial administrative workload even before the property-specific complications are considered.
Companies House Penalties for Late Accounts
If your accounts reach Companies House after the nine-month filing deadline, an automatic penalty is charged. For a private limited company, the current penalty structure is as follows:
Time | Penalty |
|---|---|
Up to one month late | £150 |
One to three months late | £375 |
Three to six months late | £750 |
More than six months late | £1,500 |
For example,
A company that misses the deadline by a few weeks two years running will pay £300 for the second late filing, not £150. A delay of more than six months in consecutive years would cost £3,000 in Companies House penalties alone.
These penalties sit with the company, but the legal responsibility sits with the directors. Failure to file accounts on time is an offence under the Companies Act 2006, and any criminal proceedings against directors are separate from the company’s late filing penalty.
HMRC Penalties for a Late CT600
The CT600 penalty structure works differently from Companies House. It starts as soon as you miss the 12-month filing deadline:
Time | Penalty |
|---|---|
One day late | £200 |
Three months late | a further £200 penalty (£400 in total) |
Six months late | 10% of any unpaid Corporation Tax, added on top |
Twelve months late | a further 10% of unpaid tax |
If your CT600 is late for the third time in a row, the initial flat penalties increase from £200 to £1,000 each, meaning the starting position for a habitual late filer jumps to £2,000 before the percentage-based penalties even begin to apply.
HMRC also has the power to issue a tax determination if the return has still not been filed, usually once it is at least six months late. This is HMRC’s estimate of what you owe. You cannot appeal the amount of the determination itself, but you can replace it by filing your actual return.
Late Payment Interest
Late payment interest is charged separately from filing penalties, and it applies automatically from the day after your Corporation Tax payment is due.
From 6 April 2025, HMRC changed the rate to Bank of England base rate plus 4 percentage points. Because the base rate moves over time, the interest charge also moves. The current HMRC late payment interest rate is 7.75% from 9 January 2026, which means unpaid Corporation Tax can quickly become more expensive than many directors expect.
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Why Property Companies Are Harder Than Most
A simple service company or small trading business has relatively straightforward accounting. Revenue in, expenses out, depreciation on a few assets, and a relatively clean tax calculation. A property limited company introduces a set of additional layers that require either specialist knowledge or a significant investment of your own time to get right.
Capital Versus Revenue Expenditure
This is one of the most important and commonly misunderstood distinctions in property accounting. In broad terms, revenue expenditure, such as repairs and maintenance, is normally deductible when calculating property business profits, while capital expenditure is not immediately deductible and is instead reflected in the tax treatment or capital value of the asset.
The difficulty is that the line between the two is not always clear. Like-for-like repairs may be revenue, while expenditure that improves the property or replaces the whole of an asset is more likely to be capital. Getting this wrong can affect both the company’s current tax position and its future tax treatment when the property is sold.
Section 24 Mortgage Interest and the Corporate Advantage
Individual landlords who borrow to fund property investments face the Section 24 restriction, which limits mortgage interest relief to the basic rate of income tax regardless of what they pay. A higher-rate taxpayer can no longer deduct the full cost of mortgage interest from their rental profit.
This restriction does not apply inside a limited company. A property company can deduct its full mortgage interest cost against rental income as a business expense. The benefit of this needs to be correctly recorded throughout the year and properly claimed in the CT600. If mortgage interest is not coded correctly in your bookkeeping, it can easily be missed or treated in the wrong accounting period, resulting in higher Corporation Tax than you should be paying.
Replacement of Domestic Items Relief
This relief was introduced in April 2016 to replace the old Wear and Tear Allowance, and it allows a landlord to claim a deduction for the cost of replacing domestic items in a residential rental property. Qualifying items include sofas, beds, carpets, curtains, white goods, and other household furnishings.
The deduction is for the replacement cost, not the improvement. If you replace a basic fridge with a premium model, only the cost of a comparable basic fridge is deductible. The excess is capital.
Despite this being a well-established relief, it is routinely missed or incompletely claimed by directors who do their own accounts. If you replace a washing machine, a sofa, and carpets across multiple properties in a year and fail to claim, the cost to the company in overpaid Corporation Tax is real. The relief is not available if you have already claimed capital allowances on the same item, and the rules on what qualifies require some care.
Capital Allowances on Fixtures and Fittings
Capital allowances can give a company tax relief on certain capital expenditure on plant and machinery, rather than as an immediate revenue deduction. In a property business, this may include some fixtures and integral features, such as heating, electrical, or water systems, where the qualifying conditions are met.
For ordinary residential lettings, the position is more restricted than many directors expect. HMRC says that, other than furnished holiday lettings, capital allowances generally cannot be claimed on furniture and furnishings in a property business, so care is needed to distinguish between items that may qualify for capital allowances and items dealt with under other property tax rules, such as Replacement of Domestic Items Relief. The position can be more complex where the company also holds commercial or mixed-use property.
Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings
ATED is the tax that catches more directors off guard than almost any other obligation associated with property limited companies. If your company owns a residential property in the UK that is valued at more than £500,000, it may fall within the scope of ATED. The chargeable period runs from 1 April to 31 March each year. The annual charges for 2026 to 2027 are structured as follows:
Property value | Annual charges |
|---|---|
£500,001 to £1 million | £4,600 |
£1,000,001 to £2 million | £9,450 |
£2,000,001 to £5 million | £32,200 |
£5,000,001 to £10 million | £75,450 |
£10,000,001 to £20 million | £151,450 |
Over £20 million | £303,450 |
These charges are updated periodically, and companies must also use the correct ATED valuation date when deciding whether the property falls within the regime.
The critical point many directors miss is that even if the company qualifies for relief, which may apply where the property is let to unconnected tenants on a commercial basis, that does not always remove the filing obligation. Depending on the circumstances, the company may still need to file an ATED return or a Relief Declaration Return. The normal filing deadline is 30 April at the start of the chargeable period. If a property is acquired during the year and comes within ATED, the filing deadline is generally within 30 days of acquisition. Failure to file can lead to penalties and interest on any unpaid charge.
A Worked Example: What Missed Deductions Can Cost
Consider a director who owns two buy-to-let properties through a limited company and prepares the accounts personally. Over two years, the company replaces domestic items such as carpets, white goods, sofas and beds. Where the conditions are met, these costs may qualify for Replacement of Domestic Items Relief, but if the deduction is missed, the company may end up paying more Corporation Tax than necessary.
A similar issue can arise with repair costs. Replacing a boiler on a like-for-like basis may sometimes be treated as a revenue repair, but the correct treatment depends on the facts and whether the cost is capital in nature. If mistakes like these are not spotted in time, the company may need to amend its returns within HMRC’s time limits or risk losing the tax relief altogether.
What to DIY and What to Hand Over in Accounting for limited Company
The most practical approach for most property company directors is a split model. Handle the tasks you can do accurately yourself and engage a specialist for the work that requires professional judgement and specific knowledge.
Recording rent and expenses. Every time rent comes in, record it. Every time you pay a bill, record it. The categorisation matters, but the data entry itself does not require an accountant.
Bank reconciliation. Matching your accounting records to your bank statements on a regular basis is good housekeeping and within the reach of any director willing to spend an hour or two each month.
Transaction categorisation in accounting software. Using accounting software can make it easier to categorise income and expenditure as it comes in. The main challenge is not entering the figures but classifying them correctly. Once you understand the difference between revenue and capital expenditure and have a sensible chart of accounts in place, the ongoing work is usually manageable.
Receipt keeping. Photograph or scan every receipt and attach it to the relevant transaction in your accounting software. HMRC can request documentation during a compliance check, and having digital copies of everything is good practice.
How to Find the Right Specialist for Limited Company Accounting?
Not all accountants are equally equipped to advise property companies. The specific reliefs discussed in this article, particularly RDIR, capital allowances on fixtures, and ATED, require knowledge that a general practice bookkeeper may not have. When looking for an accountant, ask specifically whether they advise property limited companies, whether they handle ATED returns, and whether they are familiar with capital allowances on fixtures and fittings. An accountant who handles these regularly will cost more than a basic bookkeeping service, but the tax savings on a well-run property company will typically exceed the fee by a meaningful margin.
Conclusion
Can you do your own accounting for a property limited company? Yes, you can. There is no legal requirement to appoint an accountant, and many directors are perfectly capable of handling the day-to-day bookkeeping themselves. Recording rent, expenses, and keeping organised records throughout the year is not only manageable for many landlords but also helps reduce accountancy costs later because less time is needed to sort out the figures.
Where more caution is needed is with the statutory accounts, CT600, ATED returns, SDLT filings, and any year involving a property purchase, sale, or major refurbishment. These areas are more technical, carry stricter filing obligations, and mistakes can lead to penalties, missed reliefs, or unnecessary tax bills. For most property company directors, the most sensible approach is to keep good records yourself and use a specialist for the year-end compliance and tax work. That gives you the benefit of control over your finances without taking unnecessary risks.
Frequently Asked Questions
A limited company is separate from its directors, and if personal and company money are mixed, that can create director’s loan account issues. Keeping company transactions separate makes the records easier to maintain and helps reduce the risk of mistakes in the accounts and tax return.
HMRC allows companies to keep records in different ways, including spreadsheets, provided the records are complete and accurate. But the Company Tax Return must normally be filed online, and since the old joint filing service closed on 31 March 2026, companies will generally need compatible software to submit it. A spreadsheet can still be used for record-keeping, but on its own it is usually not enough for filing the return.
HMRC may treat this as a director’s loan unless it is salary, dividend, or a genuine expense repayment. That can create extra tax and reporting issues.
HMRC says you must keep adequate accounting records that show and explain the company’s transactions, plus supporting documents such as invoices, receipts, and bank statements. These records usually need to be kept for 6 years.
HMRC does not set a point where you must hire an accountant. But once your company’s affairs involve more technical areas like year-end tax returns, director’s loans, or complex adjustments, the risk of errors becomes much higher.
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