Millions of small businesses face new Companies House financial reporting rules

4.7 million businesses will be required to submit additional financial data to Companies House under major transparency reforms confirmed by the Government.

From April 2028, small companies and micro-entities will be required to file profit and loss accounts with Companies House under changes introduced through the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act.

The reforms are expected to affect a significant proportion of the UK’s 4.7 million registered small and micro companies who, alongside the new reporting requirements, will have to move to a fully digital filing system.

Richard Creedon, Product Compliance Manager, EMEA at Intuit, said “This is one of the biggest changes to Companies House filing requirements in years and will affect millions of UK businesses. On a positive note, this move will increase confidence in the reliability of the data held by Companies House, giving regulators access to a more complete picture of an individual company and its finances.

“The good news is that for most businesses, the accounting work itself won’t change significantly because full accounts are already prepared by them for Corporation Tax purposes and the same dataset can be used. 

 “The biggest shift will be how the information is filed, with a move from paper-based processes to digital reporting This also has benefits in terms of reducing manual errors and duplicate entries; speeding up the time it takes to make a submission. The data can be pulled directly from bookkeeping tools and the data is validated before a simple electronic submission.””