Companies House Updates the Penalty Appeal Proceess for Late Filing
Companies House has made changes to the process related with assessing penalty appeals from businesses for late filling of financial records. These changes will come into effect from October 1, 2019.
The manual for late filing penalties now has an updated policy for rejected accounts that are yet to be received by the company or presenter of the financial statements. Currently, the rejection rate for accounts that are submitted online is 0.5% whereas the rate for paper filed accounting records is 6%.
Companies House has said that it would not exercise any discretion where the financial records/ accounts have been rejected but not yet received by the presenter or the company. This is mainly because filers are the ones who are responsible for ensuring that records are provided for registration in an acceptable paper or electronic format.
According to the updated policy and new rules, the time period for processing documents have been increased from five to eight days. The Companies House has said that time period set for processing documents indicates the internal target set for processing paper documents more accurately and quickly.
This means that if Companies House takes more than eight days to process paper accounts in the future, it may not collect any resulting fine/ penalty.
The House is encouraging companies to file and submit their records/ accounts online, saying this is a relatively faster way to register as it can take around ten days to completely process paper records/ accounts at peak times.
The online filing process also reduces the threat of penalty, as businesses would get electronic acknowledgement/ confirmation that accounts has been received by Companies House and whether the accounts have been processed.
Start free ReadyRatios
financial analysis now!
start online
No registration required!
But once registered, additional features are available.