9. The Imaginary Company

This week, I’m exploring some major news for small UK companies - but also pulling back the curtain a bit on what a company really is. Because underneath the filings and frameworks, a limited company is kind of… imaginary. A structure we all agree to treat as real.

And when you start to see it that way, Companies House becomes more than compliance - it becomes an archive of stories. Some centuries old.

In this episode, I share:

- The recent reversal of UK plans to make small Ltd companies publish their full profit & loss accounts

- Why the idea of a limited company is actually a form of collective imagination

- The story of the UK’s oldest surviving Ltd company - founded in 1856 and still trading today

- How the Companies House register began as a fraud prevention tool in the 1840s

- What modern Companies House reforms are trying to prevent now (and how it connects to the past)

- A practical breakdown of the different taxes relevant to Ltd company owners 

Pictured: a parliament of rooks (yes thats the collective name). A reminder that birds also have their own social systems - just as we’ve imagined legal ones like Ltd companies into being.