When is my charity's first annual return due, and for what period?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: the same duty, but the deadline is shorter and there is no income floor at all — see below. Northern Ireland: the same duty, but CCNI states it begins only with the first full financial year after registration — see below.

How long is a charity’s first financial period?

A charity’s first financial period is often longer than a year. That period sets the date of the first annual return to the Charity Commission. The rules differ by structure. If the charity’s form is not settled yet, choose your legal structure first.

Trustees and treasurers of a newly registered charity in England and Wales tend to misread it the same way. They assume the first year runs from registration to whatever year end they choose, however short. Nothing warns against that reading, and it is wrong.

A financial period must be 6 to 18 months for an unincorporated charity or a CIO. For a company, the first accounting reference period must run more than 6 and not more than 18 months, under Companies Act 2006 s.391(5).

Take the stub between registering and the year end you chose when you set your financial year end. If it falls short of that minimum, it cannot stand as a financial period on its own. The first period runs on to the following year end instead. It can reach seventeen months.

Which means your first filing can fall more than two years after you registered. That is normal, not a sign that something has gone wrong. Charities regularly conclude they have missed something when in fact nothing was due yet.

When are a charitable company’s first accounts due?

A charitable company’s first accounts are due at Companies House on a two-limb test in Companies Act 2006 s.442(3). The deadline is not a flat “twenty-one months from incorporation”. That figure is repeated everywhere as though it were the rule. It is only what the test produces in the ordinary case.

If the first accounting reference period is more than twelve months, s.442(3) sets the Companies House deadline for the first accounts. It is whichever of these falls later:

• 9 months from the first anniversary of incorporation
• 3 months after the end of the accounting reference period

Shorten the first period, or incorporate against an awkward month end, and the answer changes. Work the test rather than quoting the headline figure.

A charitable company has a second deadline as well, 10 months after the period end, to the Charity Commission. Both are covered where you file with Companies House and file your accounts. In the first year the two deadlines can sit some weeks apart, because they run from different starting points. In every later year, both run from the same financial year end, and they are exactly one month apart.

When is the first annual return due in Scotland and Northern Ireland?

Scotland gives you 9 months rather than ten. There is no income floor at all: the first filing is due whatever the charity received. What goes in it is set out where you complete the OSCR annual return.

In Northern Ireland the duty begins with your first full financial year after registration. CCNI states this directly. So a part-period straight after registration is not itself caught. The deadline is then 10 months from that year end, for the CCNI annual monitoring return and the documents that go with it.

What should the minutes record?

Once you have worked it out, minute the result:

• the financial period end you have adopted
• the length of the first period, and why
• the dates of the first filings that follow from it

Ten minutes now saves whoever takes over as treasurer from having the same argument from scratch next year.

You now have the charity’s first period and first filing dates. The next step is to build your annual compliance calendar around them.

Common mistake: assuming the first period runs from registration to the next year end, however short that is

It is the intuitive reading and nothing warns against it. A period outside the 6 to 18 months range is not a valid financial period for an unincorporated charity or a CIO. The first period has to be extended instead, sometimes to seventeen months.

Common mistake: taking “twenty-one months” as the rule for a company’s first accounts

It is repeated everywhere as a flat figure. It is what a two-limb test produces in the ordinary case, not a rule. Shorten the first period, or incorporate against an awkward month end, and the answer changes.

Worked example

Tollgate Youth CIO registers in November and adopts 31 March as its year end. November to the following March is about five months. That is too short to be a financial period on its own. So the first period runs to 31 March the year after, about seventeen months.

The first annual report is then due 10 months after that year end, which lands in the January nearly twenty-seven months after registration. Because Tollgate is a CIO, both the annual report and the annual return are due on that timetable, whatever its income. An unincorporated charity registering on the same dates would share the same seventeen-month first period. But it would face a different test at the end of it, which is where you confirm which filings actually apply to you.