If you have tried to file your company accounts recently, you may have noticed things look different. Companies House has retired its old free online filing service and is asking everyone to use a Presenter ID instead. This is part of a wider change driven by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, which is tightening up who can file and how.
The good news: it is not complicated once you understand the moving parts. Below we explain what a Presenter ID is, how it is different from the HMRC authentication code you may already have, and how you can now file your accounts directly through TaxOptimiser.
A Presenter ID is a unique identifier that Companies House gives you so you can submit information on behalf of a company. Think of it as your filing pass. Once you have one, you can use it across multiple companies - you do not need a separate Presenter ID for every business you look after.
That makes it useful if you:
When you sign up, Companies House gives you a Presenter ID and a presenter authentication code. You pair these with the company's own authentication code each time you file.
Heads up - A Presenter ID is about who is sending the filing. The company authentication code is about which company the filing is for. You need both.
You apply for one directly with Companies House. It is free, and you usually get the details back by email fairly quickly. You can sign up here: Companies House Presenter ID sign-up.
Keep the Presenter ID and presenter code somewhere safe - you will reuse them every time you file.
This is where a lot of business owners get tangled up, because both bodies use the word "authentication" and both send codes in the post. They are completely separate.
When you sign up for an HMRC online service - Corporation Tax, VAT, PAYE or Self Assessment - HMRC posts you an activation code (sometimes called an authentication code). You use it once to switch on that service inside your HMRC online account. After you have activated the service, the code has done its job.
HMRC codes are about your tax account: filing tax returns, paying tax, and dealing with HMRC.
Companies House sends a separate company authentication code to the registered office address. This six-character code belongs to the company, not to you personally. You use it every time you file something for that company - confirmation statement, accounts, changes of director, and so on.
Companies House codes are about the public record: who owns the company, who runs it, and what its accounts look like.
HMRC codes activate your tax services. Companies House codes prove a filing is allowed for that specific company. They are not interchangeable.
For years, small companies could file their accounts using the free WebFiling service on the Companies House website. That route has been phased out as part of the changes brought in by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act.
The aim of the Act is to make the UK register more reliable and harder to misuse. In plain terms, Companies House is moving away from being a passive letterbox and becoming a more active checker of the information it holds. Part of that means tightening up filing routes, identity checks and the software that companies use to submit accounts.
The practical effect for you: the old free portal you may have used in previous years is no longer the way in. Going forward, accounts need to be filed through approved software using your Presenter ID and the company authentication code.
Heads up - If you were planning to use the old web service at the last minute before your filing deadline, do not leave it until the night before. Get your Presenter ID set up well in advance so you are not caught off guard.
We have built Companies House filing straight into TaxOptimiser, so you can prepare your accounts and submit them in one place - no extra portal, no exporting files and re-uploading them somewhere else.
Here is how it fits together inside TaxOptimiser:
If you look after several companies, you can reuse the same Presenter ID across all of them. You only need a different authentication code per company.
Before your next filing, take five minutes to make sure you have:
If any of those are missing, sort them out now rather than the week your accounts are due.
The change at Companies House sounds bigger than it is. You need a Presenter ID, you need each company's authentication code, and you need a piece of software to put the filing through. The HMRC code you got in the post is a different thing entirely - it switches on your tax services, not your Companies House access.
Once you are set up, filing your accounts year after year becomes a much shorter job. And inside TaxOptimiser, your Companies House filing and your Corporation Tax return live side by side, so the numbers you publish and the numbers you tell HMRC always tell the same story.