Companies House are due to hike their fees on 01 May 2024 with eye-watering increases of up to 317%. Inflation has been historically high during recent years but the increase that is about to hit UK businesses is quite staggering.
What is changing?
Limited Company Incorporation Fee
The most significant increase that will be implemented on 01 May is an increase in the fee that Companies House currently charges to register a new limited company online (electronically).
Companies House currently charges a fee of £12 to register a limited company electronically via Gov.uk. From 01 May this year this fee will increase to £50, which is an increase of 317%. What you receive remains exactly the same and anyone wanting to register a new limited company will simply need to pay a lot more than what was charged previously.
Companies House currently creates a limited company within 24 hours (most of the time) for the fee of £12 and they will now introduce a same-day incorporation fee of £78, for an electronic incorporation via software. So a premium fee for anyone who must have that shiny new limited company right now.
Confirmation Statement Fee
The limited company incorporation fee isn’t the only fee to be targeted by Companies House. On 01 May this year Companies House will also increase the fee that they charge to “file” the Confirmation Statement from the current fee of £13 up to the new fee of £34. This represents an increase of 162%.
The Confirmation Statement must be completed and filed annually by all limited comapnies so this quite some increase across the life-time of a company.
The filing fee charged by Companies House had been previously decreasing, down from £15 many years ago, but this decision and direction appears to have been abolished and completely reversed.
The decision to hike the fee goes against the cost benefits of electronically filing vs paper forms and it is difficult to see the justification for such increases given the minimal amount of human effort/intervention required at Companies House. You might be lead to conclude that these fees are an easy target for a Government who knows that company owners are more than likely to simply absorb the increase in costs and without incurring much of a backlash.
What does this mean for you?
Sadly this means that we will need to increase the fees that we charge all clients for these related services. So our fee to incorporate a limited company will increase from 01 May.
We will also need to increase our fee for the Confirmation Statement for the first time in over a decade. The fee that we currently charge is less than the new filing fee to be charged by Companies House, so we would be operating this service at a loss if we didn’t apply an increase to our prices. Which we simply can’t sustain on a commercial basis. As a result, a new fee of £60 will apply from 01 May this year for the completion and filing of the Confirmation Statement by your accountant.
