One Limited Company - two business activities

[Doocote]

Hi, in process of setting up a D2C ecommerce business. It will be a ltd company.

Will also have 3 or 4 clients who I will be doing ecommerce and digital marketing freelance work for. For the first year at least, this consultancy work is likely to be the main source of revenue.

Rather than setting up two separate companies, I’d prefer to have one limited company.

Just wondering if there’s any restrictions/reasons why I can’t set up one company to cover both of these business activities?

Many thanks

 

[Scalloway]

As long as you set up your accounting system to keep income and expenditure from each trade separate there is no restriction.

 

[RobPickering]

Hi, in process of setting up a D2C ecommerce business. It will be a ltd company.

Will also have 3 or 4 clients who I will be doing ecommerce and digital marketing freelance work for. For the first year at least, this consultancy work is likely to be the main source of revenue.

Rather than setting up two separate companies, I’d prefer to have one limited company.

Just wondering if there’s any restrictions/reasons why I can’t set up one company to cover both of these business activities?

Many thanks

No problem at all.

You can also use different trading names if you’d like to.

And while it makes good sense to set up separate codes for invoicing and expenses on each part of your business - so that you can better analyse and make decisions, there’s no legal or accounting obligation.

 

[Scalloway]

HMRC expect different trades to be kept separate in the Corporation Tax Return so keeping income and expenses separate is necessary, You can easily aggregate them for a business overview.

 

[RobPickering]

HMRC expect different trades to be kept separate in the Corporation Tax Return so keeping income and expenses separate is necessary, You can easily aggregate them for a business overview.

You're absolutely correct... @Doocote please disregard my response above, @Scalloway is correct, HMRC does indeed require separate reporting for Corporation Tax.

 

[Doocote]

Many thanks for your replies @Scalloway and @RobPickering

Would a separate bank account for each activity be required or would a separate sub-account within the main business bank account be sufficient?

 

[Scalloway]

One bank account is all you need. Any allocation of incom,e and expenses should be done in the accounting system.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Why not run the consulting as self employed?