What company accounts are public at Companies House?

1. Two versions of your accounts

1. On the review page, find Profit and loss account on the public recordin the Companies House filing card, or Your Companies House package for a CIC.
2. Choose Publish the full accounts, including the profit and loss account if that is your publication choice.
3. Generate a fresh preview and check the Companies House version. The HMRC version is a separate document.

When you file both destinations through SimpleCompanyTax, we prepare separate versions for each regulator:

• Companies House: the public annual accounts for the company register.
• HMRC: the full iXBRL accounts and tax computation that support the CT600.

That is why the documents can look different even though the same company figures sit behind them.

2. What is public now

A qualifying micro-entity can currently deliver its balance sheet to Companies House without the profit and loss account. By default that is what SimpleCompanyTax files: the balance sheet, the statutory statements and the notes, with the profit and loss account withheld, so the public record does not show the company's turnover or profit for the period.

You can choose to publish the profit and loss account instead. Where that option is available on the filing page, choosing it means Companies House receives the full accounts, identical to the accounts sent to HMRC, and the figures in the profit and loss account become available on the public record. Filing corrected accounts later does not remove the original filing, so the choice is worth making deliberately. Keeping the profit and loss account private remains the default.

Anyone can view accepted accounts on the Companies House register. The public document is not a private preview or a draft. Check the annual accounts carefully before filing them.

3. What HMRC receives

HMRC receives the Corporation Tax return, full iXBRL accounts and tax computation when you file the CT600. These documents include the profit and loss information needed to support the tax return. They are not published on the Companies House register.

Your filing record keeps readable PDFs as well as the submitted XML and iXBRL files. See where to find copies of your filing documents.

4. Other public company information

This page is about the annual accounts. Separate Companies House records can still show information such as the company number, registered office, directors, people with significant control and filing history. Filing smaller accounts does not hide those records.

5. Change from April 2028

Companies House has announced that from 1 April 2028, micro-entities will need to deliver a profit and loss account as part of their accounts filing. They will be able to opt out of publishing it on the public register. The filing rules are changing, so check the current guidance when that date approaches.

For now, the official micro-entity accounts guidance explains the documents a qualifying company can file and the available exemptions.