Unlock eSignature Lawfulness for Customer Support in United Kingdom

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this is the big red button it's green but consider it the big red button so once i click this button this is going to send off the application to companies house to incorporate my limited company so ready steady [Music] hello everybody and welcome back to my youtube channel i am so excited to have you here with me today so for those of you that don't know my name is rachel and i am a speaker an author a business owner but most importantly for today i am an accountant now i run the instagram platform accountancy and over there you guys asked me lots and lots of questions and within the business as a business owner we also get asked a huge amount of questions as i'm sure you can imagine one of those questions is how do i incorporate a limited company lots of people when they make it to us have either already done it and found it a bit of a nightmare or they'd like to do it but they'd really like to do it themselves so they can see how the process works so rather than create a set of instructions for you guys to follow i actually thought i would incorporate a limited company which i've been meaning to do for a while now and it's actually my own limited company um i thought i would incorporate a limited company but do it along with you guys now so i'm going to do it in real time i'm going to explain everything along the way and you guys can have this open on one screen and incorporate your very own limited company as you're watching along with me the first thing that i need to state in this video is that uh nothing included in this video is advice tax advice or legal advice so i'm just taking you with me through my journey of incorporating a limited company uh if you need help and guidance and you'd like to incorporate a limited company please do reach out we are currently accepting new clients but i just need to state that nothing in this video is legal advice and the second thing that i'd like to run through firstly is the benefits of incorporating a limited company what they are for us as accountants and business owners so the first reason lots of people incorporate a limited company is for tax efficiency so the way we withdraw profit within limited companies is slightly different to the way that sole traders do so the second reason lots of people incorporate limited companies is in the name limited so it's limited liability that means that a limited company is a completely separate legal entity to you as the director the third and final reason lots of people incorporate limited companies because of the status so they sometimes find that other suppliers or other businesses won't actually deal with them or you can't win the work if you're not a limited company for example if you are a small etsy company a lot of the time you can't actually open wholesale accounts unless you are a limited company so the three reasons we see lots of people incorporate limited companies are tax efficiency that limited liability and for the status of being a limited company now it's really important to know that there are responsibilities that come with incorporating a limited company so from an accountancy perspective each year you need to prepare a set of accounts and a corporation tax return and then any profits that are withdrawn from that company the individuals that receive them will also need to complete a self-assessment tax return so that's the accountancy side of things there's a company set of accounts and a company tax return and then the shareholders of the limited company if profit has been extracted will also need to complete a self-assessment tax return on top of that there's a couple of little bits with companies house that we need to do each year so the shareholders and directors of the company also need to file a confirmation statement which is it kind of does what it says on the tin uh it is a statement each year that confirms the information the company's house holds on behalf of you is still correct so you log in each year and say yes that's still my company name yes that's still the address yes that's still what i do nothing has changed or if something has changed throughout the year and you have an updated company's house now is your chance to do so the final thing i wanted to cover off before we get stuck in is throughout this process company's house will ask us who the directors of the company are who the shareholders are and who the company secretary is so there's three different roles that we're gonna see come up so we've got directors shareholders and company secretary so the first thing is that if you as a director of the limited company don't actually have a personal secretary or a separate individual who is going to undertake the secretarial duties of the company it is absolutely fine that it is you so if you don't select that there is a separate individual to undertake the company's secretarial duties it will fall on you as the director to undertake those duties and then just to separate the difference between directors and shareholders the directors are the people who run the company on a day-to-day basis and the shareholders are the people who own the company and it's absolutely fine if you as an individual are both of those things but in larger companies sometimes it the shareholders are different to the directors so it's important just to get those those roles right and clear in your head before you incorporate a limited company so the directors are the people who run the business the shareholders are the people who own the business and as part of that the shareholders are the only people who can receive profits from the company as dividends so directors do not receive dividends unless they are also shareholders so that's some really really important things to get clear just ahead of this process and for you to have a think about if you do have any questions please do pop them in the comments below and i will get back to you okay so now we've got through all of that stuff let's get stuck in and let's incorporate the company together so for those of you that don't know what companies house is or what they do companies house is the organization that keeps all public records and all documentation when it comes to uk registered companies so that's where you can incorporate a company dissolve a company and declare any changes to an existing company so for the purposes of incorporating a company that's where we need to go so if you google company's house and then click on the government website full company's house this is the page that will be displayed so as you can see we can go on here to find company information file information if you are an existing limited company and do lots and lots of different things so for the purpose of incorporating our brand new shiny limited company we want to go to starting a company now there's lots of different things here there's lots of templates guidance and things like that so please do have a browse have a play around if you want to pause the video here and have a play on this website please do so but for those of you that just want to get crack in what we need to do is click set up a private limited company okay so we're on the page register your company and you just need to scroll down to the bottom and click register now so one really important thing is just what you need to incorporate a limited company so you just need some information you need your own town of birth your mother's maiden name your father's first name your telephone number your national insurance number your passport number and a debit or credit card or paypal account so it costs 12 pounds to incorporate a limited company so assuming we've all got that to hand i'm just gonna click start now okay so we've got this screen asking if we are starting a new application so sometimes people start an application and realize they don't have their passport or a debit card and they click pause i'm just going to click yes this is a brand new application okay so before we start they just want to ask us some quick questions so let's click yes and we want to say that yes i have a credit debit or paypal account ready okay so this is a really important thing to note so companies house is a public register and so being the director of a limited company means that your full name surname year of birth and the address that you registered the company to will be available on the public register so this screen is just checking that anybody involved in this company is not on the secure register if you click yes it will give you further instructions but for this case i'm going to assume no and we just click continue so the government gateway is an online portal that hmrc have set up so that we as business owners can log in and check on any taxes corporation tags v-a-t p-a-y-e and things like that so rather than submitting everything via paper returns on post we're actually able to send things direct to hmrc online so once we've submitted a tax return for example we can log into our government gateway and we can pay online we can view it online and contact hmrc online so we're just going to click the create government gateway user id button and enter our email address so i'm just going to blur mine out obviously and you just need to enter the email address that you would like to be associated with the business and we click continue so this is hmrc confirming that the email address i've given is mine and that i have access to it so the code that they have just sent over to you you just need to go to your emails copy and paste it and enter it into the box so now that we've confirmed our email address we can get cracking so it's gonna ask for my full name so now it's asking you to create a password this is the password that you'll use for your government gateway account so very important that you uh can remember this so the password for government gateway must be 10 characters or more so it's quite a long one so always use a password that you can remember and if you do need to write it down keep it somewhere safe okay so because that is a very long password um hmrc asked us to set up some recovery words so this recovery word will be used if ever you're in a situation where you can't remember your password so again obviously do do something memorable okay so now i've got my government gateway user id so again i'm just going to make a note of that and again we click continue so again so now we've created a government gateway id and now we're going to continue with our company's house application so it's just double checking that the email address i entered at the beginning is the same email address that i'd like to use all the way through my company incorporation and i'm gonna say yes and continue so this screen is asking what my relationship is the person incorporating the company is to the company and that is company director and i'm gonna click save and continue so for the purpose of the video today we are incorporating a limited company and not a community interest company so for this i'm going to say no and save and continue so this is quite an important screen here company's house is asking us whether or not the company is going to be limited by shares or limited by guarantee so limited by shares is the most common type of company and what that means is if the owners of the company ever want to withdraw and distribute profits they need to be limited by shares and limited by guarantee is generally only used by sports clubs and charities so again for the purpose of today i'm going to take limited buy shares so this for most people is the most exciting part uh this is where we enter our company name for the first time and there's a couple of different things to consider so there is an option here where you can check the company name against an existing trademark and this is absolutely something that i would recommend so if we click on this you can use the trademark search here to just check that there are no existing trademarks under the name that you would like to register today again this section at the bottom here is which suffix you'd like to go on the public record so you can actually choose if you would like limited or ltd um there's absolutely no difference other than the way they look so for me accountant she's quite a long company name anyway so i'm just going to put ltd to keep it as short as possible so i'm just going to click save and continue okay so the company's registered office this is an interesting one the first and really important thing to note here is that this is the address that will be available on the public record now some people don't like to use their home address most accountancy practices actually as part of their service or as an add-on service will allow you to use their address or their registered office services so that your home address is not on the public record so that's exactly what i'm going to do now so i'm just going to enter our registered office address okay so i've entered the address i'm just going to click confirm and continue okay so this is just asking me to confirm that my registered company is going to be registered in the same place as the russian office so for me that's england and wales and i just click save and continue so i'm just going to take a different address save and continue and then enter the details of where the activity is going to take place again that we only have to enter this address if this address is different to the registered office that we entered previously okay so here um we just need to let companies house know how to contact us it's already pulled through the email address that we gave earlier so and then i'm just going to put in a one mobile number and then another mobile number that they can use to contact me we then just click save and continue so this question is just asking if this company is replacing another business and it is not so i'm just going to click save and continue again this is where if you were moving over from a sole trader to a limited company you would tick yes and provide as much detail as possible so it will ask you for maybe your utr and it'll ask to verify who you are but this business is not overtaking another business so i'm going to click no and i'm going to click save and continue it is all about trading so sometimes it could be that you are setting the limited company up and you're going to start trading as soon as it's done that um you could say on a future date and say i'm going to start training on the first of june or you could say no plans to actually start trading yet you just want to incorporate the company now so i'm setting um this company up with for a specific purpose for a specific trade that is going to launch on the 1st of june 2021 so i'm going to tell hmrc and companies house that i'm gonna start trading from the first of june 2021 and i'm gonna click save and continue okay so this question is to double check whether or not this company needs to start accounting for income tax within the first three months of trading so it's actually asking us whether or not we're going to be paying interest on non-banking loans so to a director who has loaned the company money make royalty payments all receive interest and dividend payments from overseas investments and i'm going to take no because it doesn't apply to me and i'm going to click save and continue okay so now we've come to sick code so it's sic and that stands for standard industrial classification so this is the code that hmrc uses in order to gain a bit of an understanding of exactly what it is that we're doing so the minimum number of sick codes that you can enter is of course one and the maximum is four you can also search within this so you can search for words or if you know the code and you know the numerical code you can just enter that here okay so i've added the sick codes that are relevant to my business and i'm going to click confirm and continue this screen is asking us a similar question to before and it's just checking that anybody on the company register is not in need of protection of their identity and i'm just going to click no because that doesn't apply to me save and continue again i spoke at the beginning about the differences between directors shareholders and company secretaries so this is asking details of the director of companies i'm going to put myself because i'm going to be acting as the director the shareholder and therefore doing the activities of the company secretary as well so of course i will blur this out but it's important that you enter this information for you as the director of the limited company too so the correspondence address is the address that will be made available online so you should just tick the box that says that you want to use the same address as the registered office address and just click save and continue and now it's giving us the option option to tell companies house where we live and this will not be made available on the public record so you can give them your home address and i'm just going to click save and continue so this is asking do i want to receive filing reminders by email and i do i'm just going to click save and continue so company's house will send you email reminders when you have a task to complete so it might be a confirmation statement or accounts to file and i do want it to email me rather than to write to me i just need to tell them which email address i would like to send it to and click save and continue okay so this is asking me to check and confirm the details that i've just entered i confirm where i live i confirm i want to be a director and i click save and continue okay so now we're going to set up the company shareholders and as we said at the beginning shareholders are different to directors in that the directors are the people who run the company the shareholders are the people who own the company and profits are distributed in line with the shareholder agreement so in this instance i am going to be the only shareholder but if there's more than one shareholder then this is where we tell companies house who the shareholders are so i've just told companies house that i am a director so it's asking me is the person whose information you've already entered also a shareholder so i'm going to say yes and click save and continue if the answer is no it will just take you to a different screen so i actually don't want to add another shareholder i'm going to be 100 of the shareholding so i'm going to click no and click save and continue so again it's just asking me to review and confirm the information that i've already put in so i'm going to click confirm and continue because it's all correct i do want to use ordinary shares they are the most common type of share and unless we are different types of profit extraction then this is the type of shares that most people will use so i'm gonna click save and continue so the default on the company's website for number of shares is one but i always put in 100 in case i ever decide to sell or split the shareholding to more than just myself it makes it really really easy to share and it's less fiddly so i'm just going to tell companies house that i own 100 shares rather than one share and save and continue um so i'm actually just going to take that other amount because i've just put 100 shares in so i don't want to pay 100 pounds i'm just going to put 0.01 which means the total value of the shareholding is one pound so again this is just asking me to review the information and again it's 100 shares for the total value of one pound so if i wanted to sell the business half of the business for example at today's value that would be 50p bargain so i'm just going to click confirm and continue again so now now you know the password that i told you to keep safe earlier so now it's going to ask me to log in using my government gateway user id persons with significant control is anyone within the business who holds more than 25 of the shareholding so for me i am the only psc but this will ask me to just review it and confirm it and if you had more than one person it would ask you to give their details in too so i because i have more than 25 of the shareholding i have the right to appoint and remove company directors yes so this is the register of people with significant control so if i appoint a shareholder with more than 25 i also have to add them to this register articles of association are rules that directors and shareholders need to abide by in terms of how they run the company um some companies choose to upload their own models of association which all of the directors have to agree to but for most purposes you can actually just use the template so i'm just gonna take the box that says yes i'm happy to use the template and save and continue um i'm also confirming that i agree to form the company so i'm going to click save and continue so this is how we electronically sign the document we have to give three pieces of personal information and save and continue okay so it's just gonna ask me to run through and confirm all of the information that i've given so far and i am really happy with all of this i understand that this registration application can't be changed after i proceed and so this is the big red button it's green but consider it the big red button so once i click this button this is going to send off the application to companies house to incorporate my limited company so ready steady go so at this point it's important to say that you're incorporating the limited company you are not going to have a company bank account um so you can just use your personal card and then reclaim the expense at a later date okay so i paid the application has been submitted um it's given me lots of different reference numbers so again do keep all of them handy um they will also email you the reference numbers so um if the application is successful and you have successfully incorporated a limited company with no queries or questions then you'll get an email within two working days with the company number and the certificate of incorporation okay so firstly thank you so much for following through that journey with me and watching me become the director of my very own limited company um it's a very big day and if you followed along with me and were doing your application at the same time congratulations this is a super big deal i would really encourage you to print out your certificate of incorporation frame it and pop it next to you as motivation and inspiration for where your company's going yeah thank you for following along with me i'm having the best time showing you guys insight into what it is that i do every day what it is that accountants do every day and how i can help you as a business owner so thank you so much for following along with me as always it means the world to me if you can like comment and subscribe to my channel i do a happy dance every time i get a new subscriber so thank you so much for watching this video today and i hope to see you again very soon have a great day