Can a dormant company have assets and liabilities on its balance sheet?

By Ben Davies · Updated 26 September 2026

Yes. Dormant is about what happened during the year, not about what's on the balance sheet. A company that traded once and still owes money, is owed money or holds assets can still be dormant. Its dormant accounts show those figures, as long as nothing about them changes in the year: nothing paid or collected, no interest added, nothing written off or written down.

What the law looks at

Under section 1169 of the Companies Act 2006, a company is dormant during a period in which it has no significant accounting transactions: nothing that has to be entered in its accounting records. A balance that just sits there isn't a transaction. So the test looks at what changed in the year, not at what the company owns or owes.

What can sit on a dormant balance sheet

Anything left over from before the company went quiet, as long as nothing about it changes in the year — nothing paid or collected, no interest added, nothing written off or written down:

• Money the company owes — a director's loan from its trading days, a bill it never paid, a loan from another company in the group — as long as no interest is being added to it.
• Money owed to the company — an invoice a customer never settled, or a balance another company owes it — as long as the company still expects to be paid.
• Accruals — costs recorded in the last trading year and not yet paid.
• Cash in a bank account that earns no interest and takes no charges.
• Fixed assets that don't lose value on paper — freehold land, shares in a subsidiary that haven't lost value (which is what a holding company's balance sheet carries), or something already fully written down. Equipment, vehicles and buildings are different: they have to be depreciated every year, and accountants generally treat that entry as ending dormancy.

On one day's Companies House filings in September 2026, about one set of dormant accounts in ten carried figures like these.

What the dormant accounts show

The same balance sheet as at the end of last year. With no transactions, nothing on it changes: the same assets and the same debts, shown for this year and last year side by side. The one exception is cash. If the company paid one of the disregarded payments below from its own money — the confirmation statement fee, say — its cash and net assets are lower by the amount paid.

The accounts still carry the statement that the company was dormant throughout the year. Dormant accounts don't need a profit and loss account.

What breaks dormancy

Any change, however small — including entries where no money moves:

• paying a creditor, or part of a debt
• collecting money the company is owed
• interest credited to its bank account, or a bank charge taken from it
• interest added to a loan the company owes or is owed, even if nobody pays it
• depreciating an asset, or writing an asset or a debt down or off
• a director lending the company more, or the company repaying a director

The law disregards the first shareholders paying for their shares when the company was formed, and exactly four payments: the confirmation statement fee, a change-of-name fee, a re-registration fee and the penalty for filing accounts late. Paying one of those from the company's own account doesn't end dormancy. Other Companies House fees — to strike the company off or to register a charge — and its newer fines, such as one for a late confirmation statement, aren't on the list.

If something did change, the company isn't dormant for that year. It may still be non-trading, and a non-trading company with a transaction or two files micro-entity accounts instead.

Filing them with DormantFile

DormantFile files dormant accounts that carry these figures, as well as ones that show only the share capital. When you file, you enter the balance sheet from your last accounts, or we start from the figures in the company's last accounts on the public register, where we can read them. Either way, you check the figures and save them before you can go on. If last year's accounts were filed through DormantFile, the figures carry forward on their own.

It works the same way for a company limited by guarantee and for a dormant LLP, whose balance sheet ends in members' interests rather than share capital.

The tax return stays nil. A dormant year has no income and no profit, so any CT600 HMRC asks for is a nil return, even when the accounts attached to it carry figures. For an LLP, the return HMRC can ask for is a nil SA800 (the Partnership Tax Return).

You confirm the company was dormant; we don't decide that for you. Not sure? The free Am I dormant? checker asks the questions that decide it.

Read the full guide: How to file dormant company accounts with Companies House