Many small and micro businesses start life at home, often from a spare room or a kitchen table. It is practical, efficient and cost effective, but it raises a quiet dilemma. When official paperwork asks for an address, few of us want our private home on public record. Nobody wants clients, cold callers or the merely curious turning up at their front door.
Yet HMRC and Companies House still work from a system built for an era of offices and shopfronts, where a business was expected to have a visible physical base.
That old-fashioned assumption creates friction. HMRC becomes wary when hundreds of small companies all share the same accountant’s address. From their point of view, it looks like a nest of shell companies or a potential money laundering risk. It also makes it harder to trace responsibility when something goes wrong, and harder to reach the real decision maker when deadlines or penalties arise. For compliance officers, it is not about distrusting genuine small firms, it is about ensuring accountability and transparency in an age when both can easily be hidden behind a shared letterbox.
For most home-based founders, the issue is not secrecy but safety, in particular those fleeing from an abusive partner or friend. They simply want to protect their privacy while remaining fully compliant. Fortunately, there are workable solutions that strike the balance. The simplest is to use the accountant’s address as the registered office, which is perfectly legal and widely accepted. That address appears on Companies House records and receives formal notices, keeping the home address out of public view.
For HMRC, however, a second layer matters. Every business must also have a trading address or principal place of business, which shows where the actual work happens. This is where founders can quietly state that the business operates remotely or from a private residence, without that detail ever appearing on public databases. It satisfies the requirement for traceability without exposing private information.
A third option is to use a reputable virtual office provider. The key word is reputable. HMRC systems are alert to addresses that host hundreds of companies but no staff. A virtual office with real mail handling and a credible location looks professional without attracting suspicion. It also gives a business a consistent public identity for websites, invoices and correspondence, while all sensitive post can still be managed by the accountant.
These small distinctions make a big difference. Registered office for the accountant, trading address privately declared to HMRC, and a professional correspondence address for the public face of the business if you need it. Together they protect privacy, satisfy compliance, and avoid the red flags that come from using a single address for everything.
As remote and hybrid work continue to grow, HMRC’s rules will eventually have to catch up with the reality that not every legitimate business needs to have a physical office door/absence of a physical office means anything untoward is going on.
Until then, the key for micro and small enterprises is clarity and balance. Keep official information correct, keep private details private, and use the systems in a way that respects both your professionalism and your right to a bit of peace of mind at home.
It is deeply frustrating to be forced to jump through hoops and navigate endless checks and obstacles because of the actions of a few bad actors. You are running a perfectly legitimate small business, keeping your accounts in order, following the rules, and yet you are treated with suspicion. Every form to fill in, every verification to provide, every cautious glance from authorities or banks feels like a penalty for someone else’s wrongdoing. The bureaucracy swells not because of you but because of the risk created by others, and that sense of unfairness can be exhausting and demoralising, even as you persist with patience and professionalism. I wish I had an answer to this…
PS – The same rationale is being applied by banks when deciding whether to open an account for a new company, so be warned. Trying to push past their checks is like banging your head against a brick wall, somewhat ironic given that, in the real world, they have closed many of their high street branches and moved online.
Photo by Mikey Harris
