What's Changed
If you're a director of your own limited company, your Self Assessment tax return now asks for more than it used to. From the 2025/26 tax year, HMRC has added new questions to the employment pages of the return (the SA102) specifically for directors of close companies, which covers almost every owner-managed limited company in the UK.
Until now, you simply ticked a box to say you were a director and another to say the company was a close company. Those were optional, and in practice it made little difference whether you answered them. That's changed. The questions are now mandatory, and there are several new boxes asking for real detail about your company and your dividends. Get them wrong, or leave them blank, and there's a new £60 penalty attached.
The short version: HMRC wants a clearer picture of how owner-directors pay themselves. They now want to see, for each company you direct, exactly how much you took in dividends and how much of the company you own. It's a reporting change, not a new tax, but the penalty for getting it wrong is real.
Who This Applies To
The new rules apply to directors of close companies. In plain terms, a close company is one controlled by five or fewer shareholders, or by its directors, which describes the overwhelming majority of family-run and owner-managed limited companies. If you and perhaps a spouse or business partner own and run your company, it's almost certainly a close company and these rules apply to you.
It affects a lot of people. HMRC estimates around 900,000 directors are caught by the change. If you take dividends from your own company, assume you're one of them.
The New Boxes, Explained
The detail goes on the SA102 employment pages. As well as the now-mandatory questions confirming you were a director (box 6) and that the company is a close company (box 7), close company directors must complete:
- Box 7.1, the name of the close company
- Box 7.2, the company's registration number (its Companies House number)
- Box 7.3, the dividends you received from that company during the tax year
- Box 7.4, your percentage shareholding in the company
The important wrinkle is that you need a separate SA102 page for each directorship. If you direct more than one company, you repeat the whole set of boxes for each one, even where you took no income from that directorship.
The £60 Penalty
Here's the part that's caught people's attention. Because these disclosures don't directly change your tax bill, they fall outside the usual penalty rules, so HMRC has created a new fixed £60 penalty for each instance of failing to provide the required information.
On its own, £60 isn't frightening. The catch is that it can stack. A director of three companies who leaves the new boxes blank across all three pages isn't looking at one £60 penalty, but potentially several. For what is, by any measure, an administrative slip, that adds up quickly.
The Traps to Avoid
A few things are easy to get wrong, and they're exactly the kind of detail that trips people up at 11pm in January.
- A nil-dividend year still needs a positive zero. If you took no dividends, you can't just leave box 7.3 blank, you need to enter zero. A blank box can be treated as a failure to provide the information.
- Each directorship needs its own page. Listing several companies in one box, or in the white space, doesn't meet the requirement.
- The shareholding figure is the highest you held during the year. If your percentage changed, say because of a share transfer mid-year, you report the highest percentage you held at any point, not the figure at year-end.
- The numbers have to tie up. The dividend figure on your SA102 needs to match what's on your main return, and reconcile back to the dividends declared in your company's accounts and corporation tax return. When they don't line up, HMRC notices.
When It Applies
These new disclosures apply to the 2025/26 tax return, the one filed during the 2026/27 filing season. The online deadline is 31 January 2027. So while there's time, the records you'll need, your dividend vouchers and an accurate picture of your shareholding through the year, are worth getting straight now rather than reconstructing under deadline pressure.
The Bigger Picture
On its own, this is one more form to fill in carefully. But it doesn't sit on its own. It lands at the same time as the dividend tax rates rising for 2026/27, the corporation tax marginal relief band catching more growing companies, and a general direction of travel where HMRC wants far more visibility over how owner-directors pay themselves. Each individual change is manageable. Together, they mean running a limited company tax-efficiently and compliantly takes more attention than it used to.
That's really the question worth asking. Filling in a few extra boxes once a year is one thing. But if you're spending your evenings keeping on top of dividend paperwork, share registers, shifting tax rates and new reporting rules, that's time not spent running your business, and it's exactly the sort of thing where having someone handle the whole picture pays for itself. The new reporting is a good prompt to ask whether doing it all yourself still makes sense.
Worth a look: if you want the wider context on extracting money from your company tax-efficiently, see our guides on how to pay yourself from a limited company and company pension contributions and corporation tax, or run the numbers in our dividend and corporation tax calculator.
Let us handle the whole picture, not just the boxes
We look after established limited companies end to end, your accounts, corporation tax, and the director Self Assessment that goes with them, so reporting changes like this are simply handled in the background. Your tax return is part of looking after your business, not a separate job you have to worry about. Fixed monthly fees from £145.
Book a Free ConsultationWe work with established companies across Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire, and remotely throughout the UK.
Frequently Asked Questions
From 2025/26, directors of close companies must give extra detail on the SA102 employment pages: as well as confirming you were a director and that the company is close, you report the company's name and registration number, the dividends you received from it, and your highest percentage shareholding during the year. A separate page is needed for each directorship.
HMRC has introduced a fixed £60 penalty for each instance of failing to provide the new required information. Because it applies per failure, a director of several companies who leaves the boxes blank across multiple pages could face multiple penalties. Leaving a box blank where the answer is zero can itself count as a failure.
Yes. If you're a director of a close company you still complete the new boxes in a nil-dividend year. Enter zero in the dividends box rather than leaving it blank, as a blank box can be treated as a failure to provide the information.
The new disclosures apply to the 2025/26 return, filed during the 2026/27 season, with an online deadline of 31 January 2027. It's worth getting your dividend records and shareholding details in order well before then.
This article is a general guide for the 2025/26 tax year and not tax advice. The rules around close companies and Self Assessment depend on your circumstances, and HMRC guidance on some points is still developing. Always speak to a qualified accountant about your own position before filing.