Has the free HMRC company filing service really closed?

Yes. The joint HMRC and Companies House online service — the free one most small companies used to file their accounts and Corporation Tax return together — closed on 31 March 2026. From 1 April 2026, HMRC only accepts a Company Tax Return (the CT600) filed through recognised commercial software. Companies House still accepts accounts through its own web service or on paper for now, but the free combined route is gone.

How do I file my Corporation Tax return now without the free service?

Through HMRC-recognised commercial software. For a simple micro-entity that means paying somewhere from about £30 for the cheapest recognised package up to £100-plus for software that prepares the accounts and the tax return together. HMRC keeps a public list of recognised suppliers. It's more admin than the old free portal, but for a straightforward one-person company it's still a job you can do yourself in an afternoon.

How much does a confirmation statement cost now?

£50 to file online, as of 1 February 2026. It was £13 for years, rose to £34 in May 2024, and went to £50 this February. The confirmation statement is the annual 'nothing has changed, or here's what has' filing with Companies House — separate from your accounts and your tax return, and due once every twelve months whether or not the company traded.

Do I need an accountant to file my own company accounts and tax return?

Not legally, no. A director can prepare and file a simple micro-entity's accounts and Corporation Tax return themselves using recognised software. Whether you should is a different question. If your company is dormant or genuinely simple, doing it yourself is realistic. The moment there's anything with judgement in it — how something's treated, what's allowable, a position that could go either way — that's exactly what an accountant is for, and it's worth the fee.

Is the 2027 profit and loss filing change still happening?

It's paused. The plan was for small companies and micro-entities to file a full profit and loss account from around 2027, ending abridged and filleted accounts and moving everyone to software-only filing. In January 2026 the government confirmed those reforms are paused and under review with no replacement date. For now the existing options — including filleted accounts and the Companies House web service — stay in place. But the direction of travel is clear, so it's worth knowing it's coming back in some form.

What It Now Costs to Keep a Limited Company Alive (2026)

I filed my own company’s Corporation Tax return this year, the season the free service that used to do it died. Somewhere between the two events is a story every small limited company owner is about to live through: the floor cost of simply existing on the register has gone up, and nobody sent a letter to explain it.

For years, running a tiny limited company cost almost nothing in fees. You filed your accounts and your tax return through a free government service, paid Companies House thirteen quid once a year, and got on with the actual work. That world ended quietly over the last eighteen months, and if you file your own — no accountant, little or no income, a company you keep alive because it’s yours — you’re the person the changes land on hardest.

So here’s the whole picture, in money and dates: what closed, what it costs now, what’s still coming, and the cheapest honest route through all of it.

The free filing service closed — corporation tax now needs paid software

The service most small companies used was the joint HMRC and Companies House online filing — one free portal that took your accounts and your CT600 together. It shut for good on 31 March 2026. From 1 April, HMRC only accepts a Company Tax Return filed through recognised commercial software. The free combined route doesn’t exist anymore.

Companies House will still take your accounts through its own web service or on paper for the moment. But the tax return — the CT600, the thing HMRC actually assesses — now has to go through software you pay for. For a straightforward micro-entity that’s somewhere from about £30 a return at the cheap end to £100-plus for a package that prepares the accounts and the tax together.

That’s not a fortune. But it’s a cost that didn’t exist a year ago, on a task that used to be free, aimed at the companies least able to absorb it.

The filing software was the change that made the news. It wasn’t the only cost that moved — the standing charges crept up at the same time, quietly.

The confirmation statement fee, and everything else that crept up

While the free filing was closing, the standing charges crept. The confirmation statement — the annual filing that tells Companies House nothing has changed, or lists what has — was £13 for years. It went to £34 in May 2024, and to £50 this February. That’s a fee that nearly quadrupled in under two years, on a filing every company owes whether it traded or not.

What a small limited company pays now, per year

Confirmation statement: £50 (online), once a year, trading or not.
Corporation Tax software: roughly £30 to £100-plus a year, depending on whether it does the accounts too.
Companies House accounts: still free to file yourself online for now — but see the paused reform below.
Identity verification: free to do, but a hard deadline attached (below).

Call it £80 to £150 a year in unavoidable fees and software to keep a compliant company on the register — before it earns a single pound.

None of these numbers is large on its own. Stacked up, they change the arithmetic of a hobby company, a dormant-ish micro, a one-person limited that ticks over on next to nothing. The cost of merely existing went from near zero to a hundred quid a year, and it selects for the companies with cash to spare.

Companies House identity verification: the deadline with a clock on it

The biggest change, and the one people keep discovering too late, is identity verification. Every director and every person with significant control now has to prove who they are to Companies House. Newly appointed directors have had to since 18 November 2025. Every existing director has until 18 November 2026 to do it — through GOV.UK One Login or an authorised agent.

It’s not hard: twenty minutes, photo ID, done. But it’s mandatory, it has a deadline four months out at the time of writing, and missing it is an actual offence that can block you from filing. This is the change generating the most searching and the most panic, because it’s the one with a date attached and no way to ignore it.

Verify early. It’s the single cheapest thing on this page — free, quick, and over with — and the only one that turns into a real problem if you leave it.

Who the software mandate actually filters

The stated reason for all of it is fraud. Anonymous directors, burner companies, shells set up to disappear — the identity-verification half genuinely goes at that, and it’s overdue. Proving a director is a real person is a reasonable ask.

The software-mandate half is different. A fraudster running a company to launder money pays £143 for filing software without blinking — it’s a rounding error against what they’re moving. The person who feels it is the legitimate one at the bottom of the register: the retired one-person consultancy, the dormant company someone keeps for a name, the side-project limited that earns a few hundred a year. They used the free service because free was the entire point.

A cost filter doesn’t sort the honest from the fraudulent. It sorts the ones with spare cash from the ones without. The fraudster pays and carries on; the pensioner with a dormant company wonders whether it’s worth keeping at all.

That’s the part worth saying plainly, because nobody selling you the software will: the friction lands on honesty, not on crime. It won’t stop a determined fraudster, and it will quietly push some perfectly legitimate micro-companies off the register because the juice stopped being worth the squeeze.

The 2027 profit and loss filing change: coming, then paused

There was meant to be more. Under the same reforms, small companies and micro-entities were due to start filing a full profit and loss account from around 2027 — publishing figures they’d never had to before — with abridged and filleted accounts abolished and everyone moved to software-only filing.

In January 2026 the government paused it. No replacement date, under review, and for now the existing options stay: you can still file filleted accounts and still use the Companies House web service. So if you read last year that your micro-company’s profit would soon be public, that’s on hold. But it was drafted, it was legislated for, and the direction of travel hasn’t changed — it’ll be back in some shape. Worth knowing it’s parked, not cancelled.

Do you need an accountant to file your own company accounts?

None of this needs an accountant, if the company is genuinely simple. A dormant or micro one-person limited can verify its director, file its own confirmation statement, and put a CT600 through recognised software for well under £150 all in, in an afternoon a year. That’s the cheapest compliant route, and for a lot of small companies it’s the right one.

Where an accountant earns their fee is the moment there’s a judgement in it — how something’s treated, what’s allowable, a position that could genuinely go either way. That’s real expertise and it’s worth paying for. What changed isn’t that; it’s that the free door for the simplest filing closed, and the price of being a small company went up whether you use an accountant or not.

If you run a limited company alongside a website or a shop and you’re not sure what all this means for you, get in touch — I file my own, I’ve been through every one of these changes from the inside this year, and I’ll give you a straight answer about what you actually have to do and what you can safely leave.

Related: what my accountant never mentioned is the other half of running a company yourself — the legitimate routes a few-hours-a-year fee never hunts down. And the real cost of building a website answers the other money question small businesses get dodged on — a straight number instead of “it depends”.