If you have just incorporated
Start with the certificate entry, then check your address against the registered office test. Those two decide whether the next twelve months are quiet.
Notebook
One rule per entry,and where it trips people.
Each entry takes one published rule apart: what it says, what it costs, and the detail inside it that catches owners who live somewhere else. Every figure carries the page it came from.
Entries
Seven so far, from short notes on one rule to long pieces that take a whole question apart. New ones go up on the date shown, not before.
2026-09-04 · Note
The certificate fixes every date that follows
The date printed on the certificate of incorporation is not a formality. Every deadline the company will ever have is counted from it, including two you have not heard of yet.
2026-09-05 · Note
The registered office test that quietly fails
An address either passes two conditions or it does not. Getting this wrong is one of the few ways a company can be struck off without anything else going wrong.
2026-09-06 · Note
A director who lives somewhere else
Directors do not have to live in the UK. Almost everything else about being one is public, and since identity verification arrived, every director has to prove who they are.
2026-09-07 · Note
Fourteen days is the whole margin
The confirmation statement has the shortest window of anything a company files, and the window moves every time you use it early.
2026-09-08 · Note
The ninety thousand threshold is not yours
Every guide to UK VAT leads with a turnover figure. If you and your business sit outside the UK, that figure does not apply to you at all.
2026-09-09 · Note
What late actually costs, and why the appeal usually fails
The penalty ladder is published, automatic and doubles. The appeal grounds are published too, and the list of reasons that do not work reads like a list of the reasons people actually have.
2026-09-10 · Formation
Can a non resident open a UK limited company
Yes, and the line that settles it is one sentence long. I spent a day on the four requirements around that sentence instead, because those are the ones that decide whether the application goes through.
2026-09-11 · Banking
A UK business bank account when nobody lives here
I had the protection figure wrong by 35,000 pounds and did not notice for nine months. That is the part of this subject you can check. The part everybody actually asks about is not published by anybody.
2026-09-12 · Formation
How long Companies House registration really takes
I answered this with one day for years. That is honest about the part Companies House controls and useless about everything standing in front of it, which is where the time actually goes.
2026-09-13 · Deadlines
The confirmation statement deadline, worked out properly
I filed one early to clear my desk and moved the following year's deadline forward by four months without noticing. The rule that did it is one sentence long and sits under a subheading nobody reads.
2026-09-14 · The register
PSC register requirements without the guesswork
I described this as a shareholding test for years. It is the usual test rather than the only one, and the guidance behind it carries a criminal offence, which is not a sentence I had ever read out loud to a client.
Coming up
Written in this order, published on these dates.
| Date | Entry |
|---|---|
| 2026-09-10 | Can a non resident open a UK limited company |
| 2026-09-11 | A UK business bank account when nobody lives here |
| 2026-09-12 | How long Companies House registration really takes |
| 2026-09-13 | The confirmation statement deadline, worked out properly |
| 2026-09-14 | PSC register requirements without the guesswork |
How to use this
The entries are not a course and they do not need reading in order. Each one answers a question that arrives on its own.
If a date is already close
Fourteen days is the whole margin explains the shortest window, and the calculator turns your incorporation date into the six dates that follow.
If you are selling into the UK from abroad
Read the VAT entry before you invoice anybody. The threshold most guides quote is not the test that applies to you.
If a deadline has already passed
What late actually costs has the ladder and the appeal grounds, including the line about directors living overseas.
What every entry has in common
Same shape each time, so you can skim one and know where the number is.
01
The rule as published
Quoted close to the wording on GOV.UK, with the page it came from and the day it was read.
02
The clause that catches you
Most rules contain one line written for somebody who lives here. That line is why the entry exists.
03
One action
Every entry ends with something to do. If there is nothing to do, it is trivia and it does not go up.
Standing corrections
When a figure on this site turns out to be wrong, the correction goes here with the date, and the original line stays visible in the entry.
No corrections yet. This site went up on 2026-09-04, and every figure on it was read from GOV.UK that day.