Accountants for Limited Companies UK 2026

A limited company accountant costs more than a sole trader accountant at the same firm, typically around £15 a month more, because a company has filings a sole trader simply doesn’t. Alongside a personal tax return, a limited company must produce annual accounts, file a Corporation Tax return, and keep a confirmation statement up to date, and its director usually needs a separate Self Assessment on top. This guide sets out exactly what a limited company needs from an accountant, what each of those filings costs across UK firms with published 2026 pricing, and how the turnover-banded annual fee model works if you would rather pay once a year than every month.

Every figure here comes from the same firms’ live pricing pages checked in August 2026, cross-referenced against our wider accountant costs guide. Where a firm doesn’t state whether a price includes VAT, or prices director Self Assessment as a separate add-on, we say so rather than treat two quotes as directly comparable.

What a Limited Company Needs From an Accountant That a Sole Trader Doesn’t

A sole trader has one main filing obligation: a Self Assessment tax return covering their business income alongside anything else they earn. A limited company is a separate legal entity, so it carries its own filing set on top of whatever the director files personally. That set is annual accounts showing the company’s financial position, a Corporation Tax return declaring and calculating what the company owes, and a confirmation statement keeping the company’s registered details current. Directors then usually need their own Self Assessment as well, because salary and dividends drawn from the company rarely cover the director’s full personal tax position the way employment income alone would. An accountant pricing “limited company” work is quoting for that whole set, not just the equivalent of a sole trader’s return with a different label on it. Our guide to what an accountant actually does breaks down each of these jobs in more depth.

None of this is optional bookkeeping tidiness. Accounts, the Corporation Tax return and the confirmation statement are all filed with either Companies House or HMRC as a legal requirement of trading as a limited company, which is why every firm in this guide treats them as the baseline package rather than an upgrade.

Why a Limited Company Costs About £15 a Month More

The clearest single comparison sits at The Accountancy Partnership, which publishes both rates side by side: £24.50 a month for a sole trader and £39.50 a month for a limited company, a difference of £15 a month or £180 a year. That gap buys the extra filing work described above, principally the annual accounts and the Corporation Tax return, which a sole trader’s Self Assessment doesn’t require. It’s a useful benchmark because it isolates legal structure as the variable; turnover, industry and bookkeeping quality are held constant since it’s the same firm quoting both. Our broader accountant costs guide covers the full sole trader range for comparison, from £24.50 a month up to £60+VAT a month at the top of the market.

Not every firm prices the two structures on the same rate card. Budget fixed-fee firms like Cheaper Accountant and Taxez only publish annual pricing for limited companies, banded by turnover, which makes a like-for-like monthly comparison impossible unless you divide their annual fee by twelve.

Monthly Retainer Pricing for Limited Companies

Fewer firms publish a fixed monthly rate specifically for limited companies than for sole traders. These are the published figures, checked in August 2026, alongside one headline entry price that sits behind a quote tool rather than a rate card.

Annual Fixed Fees by Turnover

This is the clearest pricing signal for a limited company, because two budget firms publish their entire fee structure by revenue band rather than hiding it behind a quote form. Cheaper Accountant charges £99 a year for a dormant company, rising through £150 up to £10,000 turnover, £250 up to £75,000, £275 up to £100,000, £375 up to £150,000, £425 up to £250,000 and £500 above that. Taxez bands differently: £49 for dormant, then £199, £299, £349, £449, £499 and £599 as turnover climbs through its own set of thresholds. Both cover company accounts and the Corporation Tax return for that fee; neither includes VAT returns or payroll, and neither states whether the published figure includes VAT itself.

The two firms split their bands at different points, so the rows above don’t align exactly: Taxez breaks at £45,000 and £90,000 (the VAT registration threshold), while Cheaper Accountant breaks at £10,000, £75,000 and £100,000. A company turning over £90,000 sits mid-band at Cheaper Accountant (£275, its £75,000-to-£100,000 band) but right on Taxez’s boundary, where the price steps from £349 to £449, so the cheaper firm can flip depending on exactly where your turnover lands.

Corporation Tax and What Your Accountant Actually Files

Corporation Tax is a separate cost from your accountant’s fee, and it’s the calculation your accountant’s Corporation Tax return exists to get right. The small profits rate is 19% on profits of £50,000 or less. The main rate is 25% on profits above £250,000. Between those two figures, Marginal Relief applies, giving an effective rate somewhere between 19% and 25% rather than a sudden jump. Both thresholds are reduced proportionately for short accounting periods and where the company has associated companies, and the rates apply from 1 April 2023. None of the fixed-fee or monthly packages above include the tax itself; they cover the work of preparing and submitting the return, not the bill it produces.

The confirmation statement is a separate filing again, confirming the company’s registered details are still accurate. It’s charged outside the headline accounts fee at most firms, typically £39 to £85 a year, and it sits alongside the accounts and Corporation Tax return as one of the three obligations a limited company carries that a sole trader doesn’t.

Director Self Assessment: The Add-On Most Packages Don’t Include

Running a limited company doesn’t remove the director’s personal Self Assessment obligation, and most accountancy packages price it as a separate line rather than folding it into the company fee. At The Accountancy Partnership, that add-on costs £10 plus VAT a month for each of the first two directors, and £10 plus VAT a month for every additional director beyond that. For a two-director company, that’s £20 plus VAT a month on top of the £39.50 company fee, which is easy to miss when comparing headline prices between firms.

The current Self Assessment tax year runs 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026. A paper return is due by 31 October 2026; an online return, and payment of any tax owed, is due by 31 January 2027. Where tax is instead collected through a director’s PAYE tax code, the online return deadline moves earlier, to 30 December 2026. Whichever route a director takes, that Self Assessment sits alongside the company’s own accounts and Corporation Tax return as a distinct filing with its own deadline, not a subset of the company work.

What Else Gets Charged Separately

Even after the core filing set and director Self Assessment, a handful of jobs are almost always priced on top of a limited company package. These are the ones that turn an apparently cheap quote into an average-priced one once the year’s actual costs land:

• VAT returns – £29 per return at Taxez, £30 at Cheaper Accountant. Filed quarterly once a company crosses the £90,000 VAT registration threshold, that’s £116 to £120 a year.
• Payroll – around £5 per payslip or £5 a month per employee, whether that’s the director’s own salary or staff on top. Our guides to running payroll yourself and payroll bureau versus software cover that side in detail, since accountants and dedicated payroll providers price it very differently.
• Confirmation statement – £39 to £85 a year, plus the separate Companies House filing fee.
• Director Self Assessment – £10 plus VAT a month per director at The Accountancy Partnership, as covered above.
• Rush work – Cheaper Accountant charges £150 extra for same-day turnaround on company accounts.

How to Keep Limited Company Accountancy Costs Down

The gap between the cheapest and most expensive routes to filing the same set of documents is large, and most of it comes down to how much work you hand over rather than which firm you pick. A few practical levers move the price more than shopping between firms does.

• Do your own bookkeeping – the annual fixed-fee firms assume you arrive with clean, categorised records, which is why they can charge £250 rather than the £474-a-year equivalent of a £39.50 monthly retainer.
• Check which turnover band you sit in – Cheaper Accountant and Taxez split bands at different points, so £5,000 of turnover either side of a line can change which firm is cheaper.
• Scope director Self Assessment deliberately – if only one director needs personal filing support, ask whether the add-on is priced per director or bundled, rather than assuming it matches the company rate.
• Confirm VAT status in writing – several firms don’t state whether headline prices include VAT; a quote that omits it can be 20% higher than the one you compared it against.
• Ask what happens in year two – introductory rates on monthly packages are common, and the renewal rate is the one you’ll actually pay longest.

If the real constraint is cash flow rather than the accountant’s fee itself, that’s a different problem with different tools: invoice finance and a business line of credit address timing gaps between invoicing and getting paid, not the size of your annual accounts bill. And if you’re still comparing firms rather than prices, our roundup of the best online accountants looks at service quality alongside cost.

Clara Wenslow

Finance & Business Services Editor

Clara analyses SME finance and procurement markets, covering business loans, invoice finance, payroll, and related B2B services. She ensures each comparison and guide is transparent and data-driven.

Reviewed by

Sarah Mitchell

B2B Commerce & Finance Reviewer