What is this letter?

What letters this reads

Companies House and HMRC write to dormant companies for a handful of recurring reasons. This tool recognises the common ones and tells you which you’re holding:

• Accounts reminder or first Gazette notice — Companies House chasing overdue annual accounts, and its final warning before starting to strike the company off the register.
• Late filing penalty — a penalty notice for accounts filed after the deadline, from £150 upward. Not always the last word: we check your record and the register for grounds to appeal, free.
• Confirmation statement reminder — the yearly Companies House filing that isn’t linked to your accounting date at all.
• Notice to deliver a Company Tax Return (CT603) — the letter that creates the legal obligation to file a CT600, sent roughly a month after your accounting period ends.
• Company Tax Return reminder (CT208) — HMRC’s chase, sent about six weeks before the CT600 filing date if nothing has been logged yet.
• Penalty determination — a flat-rate HMRC penalty for a CT600 filed late, or not filed at all.
• Corporation Tax registration (CT41G) — confirmation that HMRC has opened a Corporation Tax record for the company, with its UTR.

What happens if you leave it

Every one of these has a clock attached. A Companies House penalty doubles if a company is late two years running. A first Gazette notice, left alone, moves toward the company being struck off the register. A CT603 or CT208 that goes unanswered turns into a flat-rate HMRC penalty, then a second one at three months. None of it goes away by not opening the envelope — the deadline runs whether or not the letter is read. See late filing penalties for dormant companies and HMRC penalty letters explained for the fuller picture, or what happens if Companies House strikes off your company if a Gazette notice is what landed on the mat.

Where the dates come from

The date on your letter is the real one — set by whichever register sent it, against its own record of your company. This tool reads that date off the page rather than calculating one of its own, because HMRC and Companies House are the only authorities on when something of theirs is actually due.

What this tool does and doesn’t do

It tells you what the letter is, roughly what it will cost if it’s a penalty, and when the next date is. It doesn’t tell you the exact steps to take — that needs your company’s own record, which an anonymous scan never sees. Two scans a day are free, each up to two photos or one short PDF; the upload is held for up to 48 hours in case you sign up to save it, then deleted otherwise.