Over the course of the last few months, we have also been discussing with HMRC the difficulty companies face in filing corporation tax returns on time given that Companies Registry extended the Statutory Accounts filing deadline by three months. We specifically highlighted the difficulty that businesses and our members faced in filing returns for accounting periods ending 31 December 2019 by 31 December 2020.

HMRC have responded to this as follows:

“HMRC have a long-standing practice that allows companies to request further time to deliver their returns where they have a reasonable excuse for not being able to do so before the filing date. The relevant guidance can be found here and the contact details to request the deferral are provided on GOV.UK here.”