Companies Act 2014 section 273

Overall limitation on discretions with respect to length of financial year and annual return date

Section 273 imposes an overarching limitation on a company's freedom to choose the length of its financial year or to set its annual return date, by requiring that any such choices must still comply with the rules on how current the financial documents annexed to the annual return must be.

• A company has discretion under Part 6 of the Act to decide the length of its financial year and to set its annual return date.
• However, these discretions are subject to an overall limitation: they must be exercised in a manner that keeps the company in compliance with section 347(4).
• Section 347(4) specifies the earliest date to which the documents annexed to an annual return must be made up, ensuring that annexed financial statements are sufficiently up to date.
• In practice, this means a company cannot manipulate its financial year length or annual return date in a way that would result in outdated financial documents being filed with its annual return.