If you have searched for accountant fees for a limited company recently, you will have seen figures ranging from £60 a month all the way to £500 or more. That range is not misleading — it reflects genuine differences in what is included, how complex the work is, and whether the practice is online-first or a traditional high-street firm with corresponding overheads.

The honest answer is that most active small limited companies will pay somewhere between £80 and £300 per month for a full ongoing service, or a lower fixed fee if they only need the annual compliance work done. What matters is knowing which camp your business falls into — and making sure you are comparing like for like when you look at quotes.

Here is how we think about it, based on the questions we hear most often from new clients.

The baseline service for a limited company covers three things: the statutory year-end accounts (your profit and loss account and balance sheet), the Corporation Tax return (CT600) filed with HMRC, and the Confirmation Statement filed annually with Companies House. Most accountants bundle these together because they are interconnected — you cannot prepare the CT600 without the accounts, and the Confirmation Statement deadline runs separately but is part of the same annual compliance cycle.

Some packages also include the director’s Self Assessment tax return, which covers the personal income tax position for the year — salary, dividends, and any other income sources. Whether this is bundled in or charged as an add-on varies quite a bit between practices.

What you will rarely find included in a standard quoted price: bookkeeping, VAT returns, payroll, and management accounts. These are ongoing, variable services that depend heavily on transaction volumes and complexity, so practices almost always quote them separately. If you have been quoted a single monthly fee that sounds comprehensive, it is worth checking exactly what is and is not covered before you sign anything.

At Wings, our fixed annual fee for company accounts and the CT600 is £250, with the Confirmation Statement filed separately for £70. Bookkeeping, VAT, and payroll are quoted based on your specific requirements.

A micro-entity — one director, turnover under £100,000, no employees, no VAT registration, clean records — is genuinely simple to account for. Practices that work primarily with this profile can offer low fees sustainably, because the work is predictable and low-volume.

The cost rises as complexity increases. Here are the factors that tend to push fees higher:

• Turnover and transaction volume. More transactions mean more bookkeeping time, which is usually the single biggest cost driver in an ongoing package.
• VAT registration. Quarterly (or monthly) VAT returns add a recurring compliance layer. The scheme you are on — Standard Rate, Flat Rate, Cash Accounting — affects the preparation time involved.
• Payroll and employees. Even a small payroll requires monthly RTI submissions, pension auto-enrolment processing, and year-end P60s and P11Ds.
• Multiple directors or shareholders. Each director typically needs their own Self Assessment return, and dividend planning across shareholders adds advisory time.
• Industry complexity. CIS contractors, property development companies, e-commerce businesses with stock, and businesses trading internationally all carry complications that take longer to handle correctly.

None of this means accounting for a growing business is prohibitively expensive — it means the price should reflect what is actually being done. If every practice is quoting you the same flat fee regardless of complexity, at least one of them is either cutting corners or will be adding charges later.

The most common complaint we hear from business owners switching accountants is not about the quality of the work — it is about unexpected invoices for things they assumed were covered. A few that come up regularly:

Director’s Self Assessment

If you receive a salary and dividends from your company, you need to file a personal Self Assessment tax return each year. Many packaged quotes do not include this unless you ask explicitly. Our fixed fee for a Self Assessment return is £150 as a one-off annual charge.

Payroll setup and reporting

If you bring on employees or run even a basic director payroll, that is a separate, ongoing service. Real Time Information (RTI) submissions to HMRC are required every time you run payroll, not just at year-end.

VAT registration and returns

If your taxable turnover crosses the VAT threshold (currently £90,000 as of 2026), VAT registration and quarterly returns become mandatory. These are time-sensitive and require their own process.

Ad hoc advisory work

Tax planning conversations, HMRC correspondence, dividend advice, or a one-off question about a business decision — some practices meter these by the hour and some include reasonable advisory time in a monthly retainer. Know which you are getting.

The cleanest way to avoid surprises is to ask for a written scope of service that explicitly lists what is and is not included before you engage anyone.

This comes down to what your business actually needs throughout the year, not just at year-end.

A monthly retainer makes sense if you need ongoing bookkeeping, regular VAT returns, payroll processing, or management accounts. The work is continuous and the monthly fee spreads the cost predictably. For a small active company with VAT and a couple of employees, a well-structured monthly package is almost certainly the right model.

A fixed annual fee makes more sense if your compliance needs are genuinely simple — annual accounts, CT600, and perhaps a Self Assessment return. If you are comfortable handling your own bookkeeping through Xero or FreeAgent and your records are in good order when you hand them over, paying a fixed one-off fee for the statutory filings is a perfectly rational choice. You are not paying a monthly retainer for ongoing support you do not need.

The mistake some directors make is assuming the cheaper option is always the fixed-fee annual approach. If your records are in poor shape and the accountant has to do significant catch-up bookkeeping before they can even start on the accounts, the fixed fee will either be higher than quoted or the quality of the work will suffer. Keeping clean records throughout the year is the most effective way to keep your accounting costs low, regardless of which pricing model you use.

Not as reliably as it does in some other professions. A high fee does not guarantee better advice, faster turnaround times, or a more experienced team. Equally, a low fee does not automatically mean corners are being cut — it can mean lower overheads, a leaner online model, and a practice that has built efficient processes rather than charging for inefficiency.

What actually matters: the accountant is qualified, the firm is properly regulated, and the scope of what you are paying for is clear. In the UK, check that your accountant’s firm is supervised for anti-money laundering purposes — either by a professional body such as ICAEW, ACCA, or CIOT, or directly by HMRC. This is a legal requirement, not a nice-to-have. Also worth confirming: professional indemnity insurance coverage.

Wings is ACSP-registered with Companies House, AML-supervised by HMRC, and holds professional indemnity insurance. Our position is straightforward — we think qualified accountancy should not cost more than it needs to, and we back that with a price match promise: show us a quote from a practice with a lower price and we will match it.

If you are wondering whether a lower-priced online accountant is the right call, our guide on whether a cheap accountant is worth it goes into more detail on how to assess value rather than just cost.