Key tax dates & deadlines for contractors
Miss a filing or payment deadline and the penalties and interest are automatic — even when there's no tax to pay. This is every date a UK limited company contractor needs to keep track of: the fixed dates that are the same every year, and the ones that move with your own company year-end — plus the penalty and filing changes that took effect in April 2026 and the Companies House verification deadline in November.
Last verified: 3 August 2026 — dates and penalty amounts checked against HMRC and Companies House guidance on this date. Deadlines change; if you are reading this well after the date above, check before relying on it.
Dates that are the same for everyone
These fall on the same calendar date each year, regardless of your company's year-end. If you run a director's payroll and personal self-assessment, they all apply to you.
| Date | What's due |
|---|---|
| 31 January | Online self-assessment tax return filing deadline for the previous tax year, and your balancing payment plus first payment on account. The big one — see our payments on account guide. |
| 5 April | End of the tax year. |
| 6 April | Start of the new tax year — new rates, allowances and thresholds take effect. |
| 31 May | Deadline to give employees (including yourself as director) their P60 for the tax year just ended. |
| 6 July | Deadline to file P11D and P11D(b) for taxable benefits-in-kind, and give employees their copy. |
| 19 / 22 July | Class 1A National Insurance on benefits due — 19 July if paying by post, 22 July if paying electronically. |
| 31 July | Second payment on account due, if you make payments on account. |
| 5 October | Deadline to register for self-assessment if you became newly liable in the previous tax year (e.g. your first year drawing dividends). |
| 31 October | Paper self-assessment return deadline (most contractors file online, so 31 January applies instead). |
| 30 December | File online by this date if you want HMRC to collect tax under £3,000 through next year's PAYE code, rather than as a lump sum. |
| On or before each payday | Full Payment Submission (FPS) to HMRC through your payroll software, reporting the salary paid. This is the obligation one-director companies miss most often — it is a filing, separate from the payment below, and it is due every pay period even where no tax or NIC is payable. |
| 19 April | Payroll year-end: final FPS (or EPS) for the tax year just ended must reach HMRC by this date. |
| 14 April / July / October / January | CT61 return and payment, if your company pays you interest on a credit balance on your director's loan account — quarters end 5 April, 5 July, 5 October and 5 January, with the return due 14 days after. See our director's loan account guide. |
| 19 / 22 of each month | PAYE and NIC from your director's payroll due to HMRC — 19th by post, 22nd electronically. But see below: most contractors pay quarterly, not monthly. |
Where your average monthly PAYE and National Insurance liability is under £1,500, payment is quarterly rather than monthly — due on the 19th or 22nd of July, October, January and April, covering the quarter just ended.
Nearly every one-director contractor qualifies. On the £12,570 salary recommended in our salary vs dividends guide, the employer's National Insurance is £1,135.50 for the whole year — an average of about £95 a month, nowhere near the threshold. The monthly dates above still apply if your payroll is larger, but check which basis you are on before diarising twelve payment dates you don't need. Note that the quarterly option applies to the payment only: the FPS filing is still due every pay period.
Where a payment deadline lands on a weekend or bank holiday, cleared funds must reach HMRC by the last working day before — unless you pay by Faster Payments, debit card or corporate credit card, which are treated as same-day. HMRC has not accepted personal credit cards since January 2018, and corporate cards carry a non-refundable fee. Filing deadlines do not move.
This bites twice in 2026/27: 31 January 2027 is a Sunday (pay by Friday 29 January) and 31 July 2027 is a Saturday (pay by Friday 30 July). The PAYE payment date also falls at a weekend three times — the 22nd lands on a Saturday in August 2026, a Sunday in November 2026 and a Saturday in May 2027 — so bring those forward to the Friday.
For completeness: 31 October 2026, the paper return deadline, is a Saturday. That one does not move, because it is a filing deadline rather than a payment deadline.
A self-assessment return filed even one day late triggers an automatic £100 penalty, with further daily and percentage penalties as it drags on — and these apply even if you owe no tax.
The company side changed this year. Confirmed at Autumn Budget 2025, HMRC doubled its corporation tax late filing penalties from 1 April 2026 — the first increase since 1998. A CT600 filed one day late now costs £200 rather than £100, with a further £200 once you pass three months, and companies that have filed late in each of the two previous years face up to £2,000 per return. The doubling applies to any Company Tax Return with a filing date on or after 1 April 2026, including returns for accounting periods that ended before that date. Fixed penalties apply whether or not any tax is due, so a dormant or loss-making company is caught too.
Companies House runs a separate regime for late annual accounts: £150 up to a month late, rising through £375 and £750 to £1,500 more than six months late — and automatically doubled if accounts were also late the previous year. The two regimes are independent, so one missed year-end can produce penalties from both bodies at once.
The joint filing service closed on 31 March 2026. HMRC and Companies House used to offer a combined service (CATO) that let small companies file accounts and the CT600 together, for free. From 1 April 2026 the two must be filed separately, and the CT600 must be submitted in iXBRL format through commercial software. If you used to file both in one sitting at no cost, that route has gone.
This matters more than it sounds, because of what it does to the deadline. A return rejected by HMRC's validation rules for incorrect iXBRL tagging does not count as filed, even if you submitted it before the deadline. Miss the rejection notice and you are late — now at £200. If you are moving to new software, set it up a month or two ahead of your deadline rather than in the week the return is due.
Directors must verify their identity with Companies House. Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, identity verification has been mandatory for all new directors, PSCs and LLP members since 18 November 2025. Existing directors are in a transition period ending in November 2026, verifying at or before their next confirmation statement. If you have not done this yet, do it now rather than at your filing date — an unverified director can find they are unable to file the confirmation statement at all. Companies House fees also rose on 1 February 2026: the confirmation statement is now £50 and digital incorporation £100.
Dates that move with your company
These are different for every company. Most are driven by your company's own accounting reference date — its year-end — which is on your Companies House record. The confirmation statement is the exception: it runs off your review date, normally the anniversary of incorporation or of your last statement, which usually has nothing to do with your year-end. Don't calculate it from your accounting date.
| Obligation | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Pay corporation tax | 9 months and 1 day after your accounting period ends* |
| File annual accounts with Companies House — first accounts | 21 months after the date of incorporation (or 3 months after the accounting reference period ends, if later) |
| File annual accounts with Companies House — every year after | 9 months after your year-end (private company) |
| File Company Tax Return (CT600) with HMRC | 12 months after your accounting period ends |
| File confirmation statement | At least once every 12 months, within 14 days of your review date (not your year-end) |
| VAT returns and payment (if registered) | 1 month and 7 days after the end of each VAT quarter** |
*Companies with profits above £1.5m pay by quarterly instalments instead. Not a contractor concern, but the limit is divided by the number of associated companies, so it is worth knowing the rule exists.
**The return and the payment share that deadline. If you pay by direct debit, HMRC collects around three working days later. Monthly and annual VAT accounting are alternatives to the standard quarterly cycle — see our VAT guide.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax — quarterly updates
These apply to sole trader and rental income, not to your limited company. They matter if you have property income alongside your company, or you contract as a sole trader. MTD for Income Tax became mandatory on 6 April 2026 for qualifying income over £50,000, extending to over £30,000 from April 2027 and over £20,000 from April 2028.
Two things about the threshold that catch people out. First, it is tested against an earlier year: the April 2026 start is based on your 2024/25 return, the April 2027 phase on 2025/26, and the April 2028 phase on 2026/27. So whether you are in scope now was decided by a return you filed in January 2026. Second, "qualifying income" means gross income before expenses from self-employment and property added together — not profit. PAYE salary, pension, savings and dividend income don't count towards it, which is why your company drawings are irrelevant here even though they dwarf the threshold.
| Quarter covered | Update due |
|---|---|
| 6 April – 5 July 2026 | 7 August 2026 |
| 6 July – 5 October 2026 | 7 November 2026 |
| 6 October 2026 – 5 January 2027 | 7 February 2027 |
| 6 January – 5 April 2027 | 7 May 2027 |
Quarterly updates do not replace your self-assessment return — the final declaration is still due by 31 January. You also have to sign up for MTD for Income Tax; you are not enrolled automatically. And once you are required to join, you stay in for at least three years, even if your income later drops back below the threshold. See our Making Tax Digital guide for who is in scope and the available exemptions.
MTD brings a points-based penalty system for late quarterly updates in place of the old flat fine. HMRC has confirmed that no penalty points apply to late quarterly updates during the first year, 2026/27. Late final declarations and late payments are penalised as normal, so the reprieve is narrow — and it does not extend to anyone joining in the April 2027 or April 2028 phases, who face the full regime from day one.
On the horizon: late payment penalties for income tax and VAT are due to increase from 1 April 2027, announced at Autumn Budget 2025, with the detail still to be published. Paying late is getting more expensive, not less.
Say your company's year-end is 31 March 2027. Your corporation tax is due by 1 January 2028 (9 months and a day), your accounts are due at Companies House by 31 December 2027 (9 months), and your CT600 is due to HMRC by 31 March 2028 (12 months). Notice the tax is payable before the tax return is due — a quirk that catches out contractors who assume they can leave everything to the filing deadline.
Now apply the weekend rule to this example, because it bites hard. 1 January 2028 is a Saturday and New Year's Day, so cleared funds have to reach HMRC by Friday 31 December 2027 — which is the same day your accounts are due at Companies House. Two separate obligations, to two separate bodies, collapsing onto one working day in the middle of the Christmas period. If your year-end is 31 March, work backwards from mid-December rather than from the deadline itself.
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