RR Accountants Belfast

This one quietly costs companies interest every year.

❌ The mistake: assuming Corporation Tax is due when you submit your CT600. Most filing deadlines work that way, so it's an easy assumption.

✅ The fix: Corporation Tax is due 9 months and 1 day after your year-end — but you have 12 months to actually file the return. In other words, the payment deadline lands first. Wait until you file, and you may already be paying late, with HMRC interest running from day one.

The practical move: know your figure early. Keep your records current through the year so you can calculate and set aside the tax months before the payment date, not scramble for it after.

We track every client's CT payment and filing dates separately, so neither sneaks up.

Book a 20-minute call.

Your company year-end isn't a single deadline — it's a cluster of them. Save this checklist so nothing gets left to the last fortnight:

✅ Annual accounts filed with Companies House — due 9 months after your year-end
✅ Corporation Tax return (CT600) filed — and the tax paid 9 months and 1 day after year-end
✅ Confirmation statement up to date — and remember, you can't file it unless your director ID is verified
✅ Director's loan account reviewed — overdrawn balances have tax consequences
✅ Dividends properly documented with paperwork, not just transfers
✅ Records kept clean throughout, so the accounts are a formality, not an excavation

The firms that find year-end stressful are usually the ones discovering it. The ones that don't have a system running underneath.

That system is what we do. Book a 20-minute call.

A single number that explains a lot of landlord frustration: £2,000 a year.

On the same property. For doing nothing differently.

Here's the maths. Take a £200,000 mortgage at 5% — that's £10,000 of annual interest. Before Section 24, a higher-rate (40%) landlord deducted that interest and got £4,000 of relief.

Now, finance costs only attract a 20% basic-rate tax credit — so the relief is £2,000. That's a £2,000 increase, every year, on an unchanged portfolio.
Section 24 has been fully in force since 2020 and no reversal is coming.

The question worth asking isn't "will it change?" — it's "has anyone reviewed how my portfolio is structured around it?"

If your accountant hasn't run your Section 24 position this year, book a 20-minute call. It's part of every landlord review we do.

A genuinely useful one if you run a café, attraction, theatre, cinema or anything family-facing.

HMRC has introduced a temporary reduced VAT rate of 5% on certain supplies — children's meals, children's admission to theatres, cinemas, concerts, exhibitions and shows, and all admission tickets to attractions suitable for families with children.

It applies from 25 June 2026 to 1 September 2026.

Two things to get right: make sure your till and accounting systems apply 5% to qualifying sales for the window only, and that everything reverts cleanly on 1 September. Mis-coding either edge of the period is where errors creep in.

Not sure which of your sales qualify?

Book a 20-minute call and we'll map it against your menu or ticketing.

A quiet truth about hourly billing: it teaches clients not to call.

Every question becomes a calculation — is this worth the clock?

So people stay silent, decisions get made without advice, and problems surface later, fully grown.

We work to a scoped monthly fee instead. The work is defined, the price is known, and picking up the phone never costs you extra. That's deliberate.

It also means we're upfront about fit. Clients who send their records the night before a deadline, or who shop purely on price, tend not to thrive with how we work — and we'd rather say so early than disappoint later.

It's a standards thing, not a status thing.
If you want an accountant you can actually speak to without watching a meter, book a 20-minute call.

We get asked this a lot, so here's the straight answer.

Q: What is Compliance Vault™? It's our system for keeping you ready all year — not scrambling at deadlines. Three parts:
📂 Evidence Pack — organised, audit-ready records kept current every month, not rebuilt once a year.

🔒 Deadline Lock — every HMRC and Companies House deadline tracked and filed on time, so nothing arrives as a surprise.

📊 Portfolio Reporting Pack — clean monthly numbers delivered by the 7th, so you always know where you stand.

Q: Who's it for? Directors, landlords and business owners who'd rather have a system than a January panic.

Want to see how it'd work for you?

Book a 20-minute call or ask us to walk you through Compliance Vault™.

If you pay yourself through a limited company, the salary-versus-dividend balance isn't a "set it once" decision — and it moved in April.

💷 Salary — a deductible cost for the company, builds your NIC record, but sits inside PAYE and National Insurance.

📈 Dividends — paid from post-tax profit, no NIC, but dividend tax rates rose from 6 April 2026 and the tax-free dividend allowance is still just £500.

The efficient mix depends on your profit, your other income, and your pension plans — and the "right" split this year isn't the one that worked two years ago. This is an April-and-ongoing conversation, not a January afterthought.

We model salary, dividends and pension together for director clients each year.

Book a 20-minute call to review yours.

Here's the most common misread we're seeing among directors right now.

❌ The mistake: assuming the 18 November 2026 backstop is your deadline for Companies House identity verification.

✅ The fix: for most companies, the real trigger is your next confirmation statement. If you haven't verified by then, you can't file it — and a blocked confirmation statement stalls everything behind it.

Identity verification became law on 18 November 2025 under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act.

Every director and PSC must verify once, receive a personal code, and quote it on filings. Persistent non-compliance can mean fines and disqualification.

Most company secretaries are treating summer 2026 as their internal deadline so the autumn filings are uneventful.

We can verify clients via our agent route and keep your confirmation statement on track. Book a 20-minute call.

Audit-ready" sounds like a job for a big company. It's actually just a habit. Save this and run it once a month:

✅ Every sale invoiced and logged — not sitting in your head or your messages
✅ Every expense receipt captured digitally the day it happens
✅ Business and personal money kept in separate accounts, always
✅ Bank feed reconciled — what's recorded matches what cleared
✅ Mileage and home-working costs noted as you go, not reconstructed in January
✅ Anything you're unsure about flagged now, while the detail is fresh

Twenty minutes a month beats two panicked days before a deadline. And if MTD for Income Tax is on your horizon, this habit is the groundwork.

Want this running properly without doing it yourself?

That's our bookkeeping service.
Book a 20-minute call.

Quick question for every contractor working through a PSC: do you actually know whether your end-client counts as a "small" company this year?

It matters more than it sounds. When a client is small, responsibility for determining your IR35 status shifts back to you — not the client. And with the company-size thresholds having risen, a wave of businesses have been reclassified as small.

Some of your clients may now sit on the other side of that line without telling you.

Get this wrong and the difference between inside and outside IR35 can be tens of thousands of pounds a year.

If you've signed or renewed a contract recently, this is the conversation to have before the next invoice. Book a 20-minute call and we'll assess your status properly.