Adnan rang me at about half nine on a Tuesday in February. Not to say hello. He’d been trying to register his company for twenty minutes and he wanted someone to be annoyed at.”Twelve quid,” he said. “The site said twelve quid.”The site he’d found was from 2021. It was right in 2021, to be fair to it. Then the fee went to £50 in May 2024. Then this February it doubled again, to £100. And nobody ever went back and fixed the post, so it just sits there. Ranking. Being wrong at people.
Happens constantly with guides on how to register a business in the UK. The numbers age out and nobody touches them.He did finish that night. Took him about twenty-five minutes once he stopped complaining. But the £100 wasn’t the thing that had actually blocked him, and I’ll come back to that, because it’s what’s blocking most people at the moment and barely anyone mentions it.
Work out which thing you’re registering
People skip this bit. They’ve already decided they want a “proper company,” which usually means they want Limited on the bottom of their emails, and honestly, fair enough.But the options are genuinely different and one of them is free.
Sole trader means you and the business are legally the same thing. You tell HMRC, you keep receipts, you file once a year. Companies House never hears from you at all.
A limited company is its own legal person that happens to be run by you. It gets a number. It files accounts that anyone can read. It pays Corporation Tax on its own profits rather than you paying Income Tax on the lot.
Partnerships sit somewhere in the middle. An ordinary partnership is basically two sole traders sharing a bank balance and a great deal of trust. An LLP goes through Companies House and gets you the liability protection that a company has.
Most people want one of the first two.And I’ll say the unpopular thing here. Going sole trader first is underrated. Everyone online shoves you towards the limited company because it sounds serious, and because formation agents don’t earn anything from telling you to register for free with HMRC instead. If you’re still testing whether people will pay for the thing, sole trader is faster and cheaper and you can switch later without much drama. I’ve watched someone do the switch over a weekend.
There’s a point where limited becomes obvious though, and it’s usually one of three things. Your profit is heading past roughly £35,000. Or a customer has asked you for a company registration number, which councils and agencies and procurement departments do all the time. Or your work genuinely could get you sued, which covers anything involving other people’s homes, food, or bodies.Two of those apply to you? Register the company. One or none, don’t bother yet.
Registering as a sole trader
Easy one. Get it out of the way.You register with HMRC for Self Assessment on GOV.UK. You’ll need a Government Gateway login, your National Insurance number, an address, and roughly when you started trading. Fifteen minutes, no fee.
HMRC then posts you a Unique Taxpayer Reference. Usually about ten working days. Posts it, note. Which catches out anyone who’s moved recently and never updated their address with them.Your deadline is 5 October after the end of the tax year you started trading in, which sounds simple until you remember the tax year doesn’t start in January. It starts 6 April.
So say you picked up your first paid work in June 2025. That falls inside the 2025/26 tax year, which ran out on 5 April 2026, so you’ve got until 5 October 2026 to tell them. Sixteen months after you actually started. Absurdly generous, and that’s precisely why people miss it.Don’t leave it though. There’s genuinely no upside to waiting, and you want that UTR sitting in a drawer months before January.
Small thing that saves people a lot of pointless admin: if you earned under £1,000 from self-employment in a tax year, the trading allowance covers it and you don’t need to register at all. Sold a few bits on Vinted, did one paid gig, that’s you.The tax side, quickly. Income Tax behaves the way it always does, on your profit rather than your turnover, once you’re past the personal allowance.
Then Class 4 National Insurance sits on top of that. It’s 6% on profits from £12,570 up to £50,270. Above £50,270 it drops to 2%, which still feels like the wrong way round to me, but there we are.Class 2 you can mostly ignore. Stopped being compulsory in April 2024. You can still pay it by choice, and some people genuinely should, if there’s a hole in their State Pension record they’re trying to fill.The one that caught everyone out this year is Making Tax Digital.
It arrived for income tax on 6 April. If your self-employment and property income added together came to over £50,000 in 2024/25, you’re in it, which means digital records and a short update to HMRC every three months through software they recognise.Gross income, that. Before expenses come off. Landlords in particular keep reading that wrong and assuming they’re under the line when they aren’t.
First deadline was 7 August.
They’re not tax returns. They take minutes rather than an evening, and your actual Self Assessment still lands on 31 January like it always did. There are no penalty points for late quarterly updates during 2026/27, which is decent of them. The threshold drops to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 the year after, so if you’re anywhere near those numbers, start getting comfortable with some bookkeeping software before you’re forced to.
Keep your records for five years after the January filing deadline, by the way. Invoices, receipts, mileage, bank statements. If HMRC asks a question three years later and you’ve got nothing, you’re arguing from behind.One more thing while we’re here, since I said earlier you can switch. If you start as a sole trader and later want the company, you don’t undo anything. You register the company at Companies House as normal, then stop trading as a sole trader from a clean date and file a final Self Assessment covering the period up to it. Contracts, insurance, bank account and anything with your name on it move across to the company. Most people do it at the start of a month to keep the bookkeeping tidy. Tell your customers, because their invoices are about to change name.
Registering a limited company in the UK
Right. The part most people came here for.It’s Companies House. You can file it yourself online for £100, or pay a formation agent to do the typing. Same-day digital is £156 and paper is £124 and slow.Skip same-day. That’s £56 to have your company exist by teatime instead of tomorrow morning, and standard digital applications usually come back inside 24 hours regardless. Unless you’ve got a contract with a date attached, it’s money for nothing.
Ten minutes of prep before you open the form
Do this first. The form times out, people lose their progress, it’s irritating.
- Search your exact company name on the Companies House register
- Check the domain and the social handles while you’re at it, because people forget and then spend a fortnight regretting a name they can’t use online
- Work out whether your name contains a word that needs approval
- Pick your registered office address, and make peace with it being public
- Set up an email address for the company. Not the Gmail you made in 2011
- Do your identity verification and write the personal code down somewhere you’ll find it again
- Choose a SIC code
- Decide who holds what percentage
- £100 ready
And two calendar reminders before you close the laptop: your confirmation statement, and Corporation Tax registration within three months of starting to trade. That second one is the one I’d tattoo on people. Registering is an afternoon. Forgetting the follow-ups is what actually costs money.
- The bit that’s actually stopping people
Back to Adnan. His problem was never the hundred quid. He couldn’t get past the identity check, and he had no idea it existed.Since 18 November 2025 it’s mandatory. If you’re being appointed as a director, or you’re a person with significant control, your identity has to be verified before the appointment can be filed. A new company can’t finish incorporating until every proposed director has done it. No workaround, no doing it later.
Good news is it’s free and it isn’t painful. You go through GOV.UK One Login and most people are done in ten to twenty minutes from the sofa. At the end you get a Companies House personal code, and that code is yours permanently. It covers every directorship you’ll ever hold. You don’t repeat it per company.Have ready: photo ID, so a passport or UK photocard licence, your date of birth, your home address plus address history for the last twelve months, and a personal email.
If you’d rather not, an Authorised Corporate Service Provider can verify you instead. Usually your accountant or a formation agent. They charge somewhere between £20 and £70 for it. Reasonable if they’re already doing your books, pointless otherwise.Already a director somewhere? Your deadline is tied to your next confirmation statement, with a hard stop of 18 November 2026 and no grace period after it. An unverified director means the company can’t file its confirmation statement at all, which is a very silly way to end up in trouble.
The name
Search the register before you get attached to anything. Names have to be properly different from what’s already there. “Bright Kitchens Ltd” won’t get through if “Brite Kitchens Limited” exists, because the register doesn’t care that you spelled it differently.
Certain words need permission. Anything that suggests you’re official or regulated. British, National, Institute, Trust, and a fairly long list of others. Assume yours needs checking if you’re unsure.Limited or Ltd goes on the end, that’s not optional.
Here’s the useful bit though, and a lot of people don’t realise it. Your registered name and your trading name don’t have to match. You can register Adnan Ventures Ltd and trade as Walsall Phone Fix everywhere. You just have to show the legal name on invoices, letterheads, and your website.
Registered office, and the privacy thing
Your registered office is published. Anyone can search it. Your accountant, your ex, the bloke whose quote you turned down.So using your home address is a decision, not a default. It has to be a real address where post arrives and where someone can sign for things. No PO boxes.
If you’d rather your kitchen wasn’t on a public register, a registered office service runs about £40 to £120 a year. That one’s worth paying for. Most of what formation agents bundle in around it, less so. The “free business bank account” is a referral deal, and some of those 99p headline packages quietly enrol you in something that renews at £120 next year. Read what you’re buying.You’ll also give Companies House a registered email address, which is not published. Different thing. They just use it to contact you.
SIC codes
Five-digit code describing what you do. There’s a searchable list, and it’s plainly been sitting there a very long time, because a lot of the categories read like they were written for a different economy. There’s one called “other business support service activities not elsewhere classified,” which is where a surprising number of people quietly end up.Pick the closest one. You’re allowed up to four. You can change it later without any fuss.So don’t spend forty minutes on this.
Nobody tells you about the second half
Certificate of incorporation lands in your inbox. Lovely. Now the part people forget.
Corporation Tax registration with HMRC, within three months of starting to trade. And “starting to trade” is earlier than most people assume. Buying stock counts. Advertising counts. It isn’t the day the first payment clears.
For 2026/27 it’s 19% on profits up to £50,000, then 25% once you’re over £250,000. Between those two numbers there’s marginal relief, which is supposed to smooth out the step.It doesn’t quite. Inside that middle band, the tax on each extra pound of profit works out at roughly 26.5%. Higher than the top rate. You read that right, and no, I can’t defend it either.
Other thing. If you control more than one company, those thresholds get split between them, so company number two doesn’t get a fresh £50,000 of its own. People find that out late and it’s never a good day.A business bank account. Not legally required if you’re a sole trader. Effectively mandatory for a company, because that money isn’t yours, it’s the company’s, and mixing them creates a mess your accountant will bill you to sort out. Digital banks will have you open in a day or two. High street banks can take three weeks and want to see you in person.
Your confirmation statement, once a year, £50 online. It’s £110 if you insist on paper, which nobody should. It’s a short filing confirming your details haven’t changed. Ignore it long enough and Companies House starts striking the company off.Annual accounts too. First set due 21 months after incorporation, then nine months after each year end, plus a Company Tax Return.And if you’re paying yourself in dividends, the rates went up on 6 April 2026. 10.75% basic, 35.75% higher, 39.35% additional, first £500 free. Any salary and dividend split built on last year’s numbers needs another look.
VAT and the £90,000 line
Separate from registering the business. Catches out growing businesses all the time.
You have to register once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling twelve-month period. Rolling. Not your financial year, not the tax year. You check the previous twelve months at the end of every single month, and if you’ve crossed it you’ve got 30 days from the end of that month to tell HMRC.There’s also a forward test. Expecting to go over £90,000 in the next 30 days on its own? Register now. That’s the big one-off contract scenario.
If things go the other way, the deregistration threshold is £88,000.
You can register voluntarily below the line, and whether that’s clever depends entirely on who pays you. Selling to VAT-registered businesses, they reclaim it, so your 20% costs them nothing and you get to reclaim on your own purchases. Selling to the public, you’ve just made yourself a fifth more expensive than the person down the road who isn’t registered. Do the sums before you volunteer for extra paperwork.
Employing someone
Short version. You register as an employer with HMRC and run PAYE before their first payday, not after.Employer National Insurance is 15% on earnings above £5,000 a year. The Employment Allowance can take up to £10,500 off that bill if you qualify, although sole-director companies are generally shut out of it. There’s a workplace pension to set up as well.
One that actually happened
Bloke I know, Rizwan, fixes phones and tablets out of a small unit in Walsall. Started August 2024 with a soldering station, a Facebook page, and maybe £900 of parts.Registered as a sole trader that same week. Free, fifteen minutes, did it on his phone. First year came to about £31,000 turnover, so Income Tax and Class 4 NI on the profit and nothing else to think about. No accounts, no Companies House deadlines, no annual fee.
Then in October 2025 a local college wanted him on their supplier list for staff device repairs, and their procurement form had a mandatory box for a company registration number. Sole traders haven’t got one.So he registered the company. £50 at the time, this was before February’s increase, and he did the identity verification himself on a Sunday evening. Whole thing done inside an hour, company live Monday afternoon. He kept the same shop name on the sign and just added the Ltd name to invoices and the website footer.
June 2026, rolling twelve-month turnover hit somewhere around £91,400, mostly off that college work plus a couple of small business accounts. Over the line. He registered for VAT, sulked about it for a fortnight, and then it turned out fine because most of his growth was coming from customers who reclaim it anyway.Nothing clever about any of that. He just registered the simplest thing that worked and changed it when there was a reason to. Two years, £50 total, a few hours of admin.
FAQs
How long does it take to register a business in the UK?
Sole trader with HMRC is about fifteen minutes, but your UTR arrives by post roughly ten working days later. A limited company filed digitally is usually approved within 24 hours. Identity verification adds ten to twenty minutes and has to happen first.
How much does it cost to register a limited company in 2026?
£100 online with Companies House. £156 same-day digital, £124 on paper. The annual confirmation statement is £50. Identity verification through GOV.UK One Login is free.
Do I need to register if I’m only earning a bit?
Under £1,000 of self-employment income in a tax year, no. The trading allowance covers it.
What’s the deadline for registering as self-employed?
5 October after the end of the tax year you started trading in. Start in June 2025, your deadline is 5 October 2026.
Can I register a business name without setting up a company?
You can trade under whatever you like as a sole trader, as long as it doesn’t include Ltd, Limited, plc or LLP and isn’t misleading. But it isn’t protected. Anyone can use it. Registering the company is what stops someone taking the exact name.
Do I have to use my home address as the registered office?
No, and think about it before you do, because registered office addresses are public. A service costs roughly £40 to £120 a year. Whatever you use has to be a real address where post is received, so no PO boxes.
Do I need an accountant to register the company?
No. You can file it yourself. An accountant earns their money afterwards, on Corporation Tax and payroll and working out how to pay yourself sensibly, which matters more now that dividend rates have gone up.
What’s the difference between Companies House and HMRC here?
Companies House creates the legal company. HMRC deals with the tax. Registering the company doesn’t automatically handle Corporation Tax, VAT or PAYE. Those are separate, with separate deadlines. Sole traders only deal with HMRC.
Can a non-UK resident register a UK company?
Yes, there’s no residency requirement for directors or shareholders. You’ll need a UK registered office address in the relevant jurisdiction, and identity verification applies to you exactly as it does to everyone else. Opening the bank account is usually the harder part, not the registration.
When do I need to register for VAT?
Once taxable turnover crosses £90,000 in any rolling twelve months, or if you expect to cross it in the next 30 days on its own. Then 30 days from the end of the month you crossed in to notify HMRC.
Adnan’s company has been going six months. He still brings the £100 up now and then, usually while he’s paying for something unrelated. The registration itself he barely thinks about. One evening, one form, and a personal code he wrote on the back of an envelope and then spent twenty minutes hunting for in July.
That’s about the shape of it for most people. Registering is quick. It’s the remembering afterwards that takes practice.
