Any company that makes a trading profit will need to pay Corporation Tax. The current rate is 19% of profits and is due 9 months and 1 day after the end of the company’s financial year. The tax return deadline is a day earlier than this.

If you make profits of over £1.5m you need to pay in instalments, however the clients that Anderson Accounts deal with are not at this level, so I will focus on explaining the process for companies under this threshold.

HMRC offer many ways to pay your Corporation Tax bill and it is important to pay it on time to avoid any penalties or interest on late payments. When we complete a tax return for you, we will advise you of the payment deadline. It will also be included at the bottom of the calculation which we send you.

To pay your Corporation Tax bill, you can go to HMRC’s payment website. You can then log in through your Government Gateway account, but it will also be possible to pay without signing in.

If you log in, you should see something like the below where you can see your outstanding balance and select the Make a Corporation Tax payment. If you choose to make a payment, you will need to select which accounting period you want to make the payment for, choose an amount to pay and then a method to pay, including a direct debit, by using a card or by a direct bank payment – the website will set this all up for you.

If you chose to proceed without logging in, you will get a screen similar to the below, requiring a Corporation Tax payment reference.

To get this reference, you will either need to log in to the first screen above (A – Logged in Screen) and select View Your Corporation Tax statement and then select the accounting period in question. This will take you through to another screen as below, and the reference will be where the red bar is below. If you are unable to log in to find this reference, then your accountant should be able to provide it for you. Please note this reference is different each year, so you will need a new one for each payment.