With effect from 1 October 2012, Companies House are reducing some of their fees. In particular, the fee for filing a company's annual return online – a fee which every company has to pay - is dropping from £14 to £13.
Comment
Why?
The fee is a cost. In absolute terms, reducing it by £1 is not going to change anything.
It will not encourage swathes of entrepreneurs to go into business.
It will not tip the balance towards incorporation.
There is currently a difference between filing online (fee = £14) and filing by paper (fee = £40). The difference is supposed to act as an incentive to file your company's return online. Reducing the online fee from £14 to £13 surely won't encourage more companies to file online - will it?
The loss to the Government in lost revenue will be approx. £2.6m (in August 2012, there were 2.6m active companies on the register per Companies House).
It just seems rather pointless. Or maybe we're just being unappreciative!
More details are available here.
