Dormant company with money in the bank: still dormant, and how to file

By Max Szolcek, founder of Dormant Return. Last updated 3 September 2026

Yes, a dormant company can have a bank account with money in it. Holding cash is not trading, and it is not a significant accounting transaction. What matters is what the money does: if it sits there, the company stays dormant; if it earns interest or gets spent on running a business, it does not. This guide covers the common shapes and what the return looks like.

Two tests, and cash passes both

Companies House calls a company dormant if it has had no significant accounting transactions in the financial year. Its own list of transactions that do not count is short: filing fees paid to Companies House, penalties for late filing of accounts, and money paid for shares when the company was incorporated. A balance sitting in a bank account is not a transaction at all, so it does not affect the test.

HMRC's test is different. A company is dormant for Corporation Tax when it has stopped trading, or has never started, and has no other income, for example from investments. Trading in HMRC's sense includes buying, selling, renting property, advertising, employing someone and getting interest. Cash in the bank is fine. Cash that earns interest is not, because interest is income. That single point catches more directors than any other and has its own guide: bank interest and dormant companies.

The full comparison of the two regulators is in dormant for Companies House vs dormant for Corporation Tax.

The shapes we see most often

The company traded years ago and kept its cash

A consultancy or a side business winds down, the last invoice is paid, and the director leaves a few thousand pounds in the account rather than close the company. Each year since, nothing has happened. That company is dormant now, for both regulators, provided the account pays no interest. It still owns the cash, so its balance sheet is not all zeroes, and its accounts must say so.

Share capital has been paid in

A company formed with, say, 100 shares of £1 that the founder actually paid for has £100 of cash and £100 of called up share capital. Money paid for shares at incorporation is on Companies House's excluded list, so the company is dormant, and its balance sheet shows the £100 on both sides.

A director's loan funds the bank account

Somebody has to pay the Companies House fee and the cost of filing. When the director pays from personal money and the company owes it back, that is a creditor. A director's loan is a liability of the company, not income, so it does not break dormancy. Nor does paying the confirmation statement fee, which is one of the excluded transactions. The loan simply appears in the accounts as an amount owed.

Most real cases are a mix of all three.

What the dormant balance sheet looks like

Dormant accounts are a single short balance sheet. For the cases above it has four figures that matter:

Line	What it is
Cash at bank and in hand	The bank balance at the period end.
Creditors	What the company owes, typically a director's loan. Zero if nobody is owed anything.
Called up share capital	The nominal value of the shares that have been issued and paid.
Profit and loss account	The reserve carried forward from earlier years. Negative if past losses exceed past profits.

The four must balance: cash minus creditors equals share capital plus the profit and loss reserve. If they do not, one figure is wrong, usually the reserve, which is simply whatever makes the sum work once the other three are known. You already have all four: they are on the dormant accounts you file at Companies House each year (form AA02, or its online equivalent), and the figures for HMRC must match them.

Holds money but does nothing? Dormant Return's £5 dormant filing takes an optional balance sheet: cash at bank, creditors, share capital and the profit and loss reserve, re-keyed from the dormant accounts you already filed at Companies House, plus a tick to say the company traded in the past. The four figures are checked to balance before anything is sent. Filed to HMRC under your own Government Gateway sign-in.

Start your return

The CT600 itself is still all zeroes

The balance sheet lives in the accounts attached to the return, not in the return. The CT600 for a dormant company reports no turnover, no profits and no tax, whatever the bank balance, because a balance is not income. HMRC still needs the accounts tagged in iXBRL and attached, which is why the four figures have to be entered somewhere; how the tagging works is in dormant company iXBRL accounts explained.

One tag does change: the accounts declare whether the company has never traded or has stopped trading, and HMRC's checks read it, so a filing tool has to ask.

Whether a return is due at all

None of this changes the basic rule: a CT600 is due when HMRC has sent a notice to deliver one, and not otherwise. A company that has held the same cash for years and has told HMRC it is dormant may not receive a notice at all. If it does, or if it has filed returns before and HMRC still expects one, the return is due even though it will show nil tax. The rule and its exceptions are in do dormant companies need to file a CT600?, and the filing steps are in how to file a dormant company CT600 online.

What would break dormancy

Interest on the balance. Even a few pence of interest is income and ends dormancy for HMRC for that period. Move the money to a non-interest-bearing account if you want the company to stay dormant.
Spending the cash on business activity. Paying a supplier, a subscription or an adviser for work towards a trade is a transaction, and it points to trading.
Paying the director. Salary or a dividend is a significant transaction and, for HMRC, employing someone counts as trading.

Repaying the director's loan, on the other hand, is neither income nor trading.