Clare, re SMP and Limited co's. I have just finished 39 weeks of SMP and I am self employed via my own ltd co. Your company can claim the SMP payments back from HMRC and if your co only has you as an employee then HMRC will also pay a handling fee of about 4.5%. You can claim online so you shouldn't even need to pay your accountant to do this for you. You can do all of this via the HMRC website. It's well worth doing.