Issues With Limited Liability Partnership Accounting Dates

After an LLP formation, the accounting reference date is an interesting matter in the case of the limited liability partnership. The LLP financial year-ends date decided by legislation, which sets the first accounting, reference date as the last day in the month of the first year anniversary of the incorporation of the limited liability partnership. For example, where a limited liability partnership incorporated on 5 August 2018, its accounting reference date will be 31 August 2019. This accounting reference date is then fixed for all future years for statutory reporting to Companies House.

What makes this interesting, and potentially costly for the business owner, is that HMRC has different rules. HMRC treats limited liability partnerships as sole traders and this means that the end of the financial year is automatically set to 5 April each year. This can be a real headache for the limited liability partnership. These differing reporting requirements mean that two sets of accounts must be maintained and submitted to HMRC and Companies House on different LLP financial year ends dates. For a small business, running as an LLP, this can mean an unwelcome and distracting administration overhead. It can also mean the doubling of accountancy fees to make up the two sets of books.

Clearly, many limited liability partnerships find this inconvenient and needlessly costly. Thankfully, Coddan  is able to help to change an accounting reference date. We are able to engage with Companies House to process a change in the limited liability partnership's financial year to bring it into line with the HMRC financial year. In this way, we are able to save our customers a great deal of extra effort, not to mention significant expense. Companies House has a series of regulations associated with making this LLP accounting reference dates change, and Coddan is fully experienced in making sure our clients meet these requirements.