Your year end is unique to your company. Unlike personal tax planning, which revolves around 5 April, your company's planning window closes on its own accounting year end date. This guide covers the decisions to make in the months before that date, and the deadlines that follow it.
The months before your company's year end are the single most valuable planning window in the whole accounting cycle. Almost every meaningful decision, pension contributions, equipment purchases, dividend timing, salary levels, staff benefits, only reduces this year's corporation tax bill if it is actioned before the year end date. Once your year end passes, the accounts are what they are.
Yet the pattern we see over and over is this: directors think about their year end when the accounts are being prepared, months after the date has passed. By then the conversation is history, not strategy. There is nothing an accountant can do in month nine that beats a decision made in month ten of the accounting year.
This guide walks through every area we review with clients before a company year end: profit extraction, family employment, benefits, home office and vehicle costs, capital spending, reliefs, pensions and longer-term structuring, plus the filing and payment deadlines that follow. If you want the one-page version, our free Company Year End Checklist covers the same ground in an interactive format.