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While corporation tax is imposed by Finance Acts annually for a financial year, which run from 1 April one year to the following 31 March, it is assessed and charged by reference to a company's accounting period.

In the majority of cases an accounting period for corporation tax purposes will coincide with the company's own period of account. (The situation which arises when an accounting period does not coincide with a period of account is dealt with at D1.303).

In this context, the term 'accounting date'¹ means the date to which a company makes up its accounts and 'period of account' means the period for the company prepares its accounts². 'Accounting period'³ is a term which indicates the period by reference to which corporation tax is chargeable. It is not expressly defined, instead the legislation prescribes the circumstances which will begin and end an accounting period. In some cases it is necessary to apportion the profits of a period of account to arrive at the profits for an accounting period. Most often this is because