3. Your Financial Year

It goes without saying that your financial year lasts 12 months. But when it starts and ends is up to you. You can simply take the beginning of your financial year to be the date you start your business. Or, if it is more convenient, you can choose to complete accounts for part of a year in your first year, up to whenever you want your financial year to start, and then file a return every 12 months thereafter.

Probably the best reason for changing your financial year is so that it fits in with the UK tax year, which runs from 6 April to 5 April. (Corporation tax, however, is based on a financial year that runs from 1 April to 31 March.) The beginning of the tax year is when the chancellor usually chooses to make changes to tax legislation, so adopting the same calendar will at least prevent you from having to take account of different laws in a single year.