Companies House is tough on any business that misses its deadline – but amazingly cavalier about its own timekeeping. An organisation that fines companies for failing to file accounts on time or notify it of board changes within the time limit has had to admit it is forced to delay implementation of the latest Companies Act provisions by a year.

The excuse is computer problems – the government’s well-used version of the dog eating its homework. Would Companies House accept such an excuse from any of the businesses whose records it keeps? Certainly not, but Companies House sets its own rules and the government has no plans to punish it for being late.

The government records agency cannot say it hasn’t had time to prepare. The Companies Act has taken a decade to get to this stage; it received Royal Assent three years ago giving Companies House a final version of its provisions; and implementation was deferred until 2008 anyway.

Now Companies House warns it will need an extra year, until October 2009. History says it will be no surprise if even that proves optimistic.

History also says that government agencies are notoriously bad on computer contracts. Are they unlucky? Are their failures merely more public than those of private industry? Or should we conclude that the state inherently poor at securing delivery?

The message this latest delay sends out from Companies House and its government masters is that if they aren’t that concerned by the new Companies Act, why should business be bothered?

Would Michael Bright be in prison for fraud if Independent Insurance had not gone bust? Once the insurer failed, the forensic accountants crawled all over it, found the black hole that caused the insolvency and charged the key executives. But if the questionable accounting had not been enough to bring down the company, would there have been a fraud trial?

Plenty of companies take an optimistic view of business and get away with it. Some take a similar view and get caught out, but the companies – and often the executives – survive even if the share price is decimated. But when a company goes bust, over-optimism is likely to be branded as criminal.

Bright’s sin was to note the big claims against the company on a whiteboard until they crystallised rather than provide for them in the accounts. An optimist says that is because they might go away; a prosecutor calls it deliberate non-disclosure. But if Bright’s optimism had been well placed he would be lauded.

Other than inflating his share price, pay packet and ego, Bright did not gain personally from the deception. When the pin hit the balloon, the shares were worthless anyway.

Insurance is about risk, of course, and Bright assessed Independent’s wrongly. But no pessimist ever went into business and if every contingency was provided for, most businesses would appear insolvent. How many other directors – from dot.com companies to banks – should now be asking whether they would face jail if their optimism turns out to be misplaced and their company fails?

Independent was not Enron, but British business should take it as a warning. A mistake big enough to bring down the company could mean up to 10 years in prison.

The maverick British Lord Chief Justice, Lord Denning, stated that however big they are, no-one is above the law. Microsoft has discovered that despite its size, the European courts are even mightier. It has given up the fight to protect its own intellectual property.

Bill Gates built a big company by innovation, beating his rivals by designing better products that business and the public chose. And his reward? To be told to hand over that advantage to his less innovative competitors so that they can catch up.

US competition authorities ordered Microsoft to license its products to competitors but at a price the rivals were reluctant to pay. That shows what the innovative advantage was worth. However, the EU regulators believe Microsoft’s intellectual property should be shared out for almost nothing – one-off fee of just £7,000. When royalties are payable, the EU ordered a cut from 5.95 per cent to just 0.4 per cent.

Gates’s company has resisted this theft of its enterprise for a decade but has now given up after hefty fines, fines for resisting the fines and with new fines being clocked up each day. The £1bn Microsoft has set aside for fines is small for a mighty corporation but the principle is large: design something really good and you must share it with your inefficient rivals.

Why should entrepreneurs bother if that is the message? What reward is there for taking risk? The drug companies have already seen pressure to share their successes; other companies should worry that patents no longer offer protection.

Competition regulators argue that the greater good is better served if more companies can offer a winning product, bringing down prices. That is back-door nationalisation though: confiscation of private value for the public good.

First came the regulation; now come the penalties. Fines are being handed out like confetti to companies – not by the courts, but by unelected watchdogs.

Latest to have its chequebook forced open is the company that operated phone quizzes for GMTV, fined £250,000 by Icstis, the premium-rate line watchdog. That is its maximum penalty but GMTV could be fined far more by its regulator, Ofcom. If nothing else, that shows how inconsistent these fines are.

Of course, no business should break the rules, but with the rule-book getting so thick, it becomes increasingly likely a business will transgress – or that a rogue employee will take a short cut or fail to understand the regulations.

Companies always knew they could be sued by customers, staff or others to whom they cause damage; then the criminal courts became involved with manslaughter, pollution and other law. Now the regulators are allowed to apply their non-judicial fines too.

Financial services companies were an early target – not least because they have the cash. The regulators found a regular series of financial penalties made a healthy contribution to their budgets, but because fines became so common they have been steadily increased in size. Naming and shaming stops working when everyone has been shamed.

Lloyds Bank thus found itself fined £1.9m for selling something called precipice bonds. But that is nothing now compared with fines from the Office of Fair Trading: Hasbro was fined £17.3m for fixing the price of UK toys. Now the Americans have upped the stakes. The OFT fined British Airways £121m for agreeing its surcharges – presumably to keep up with the US Department of Justice, which fined the airline $300m for the same thing.

Where will it end? When the fine is so large it puts the company out of business, causing even more damage than the original sin?

Business needs to know the extent of its liability, if only because impending penalties ought to be included on the balance sheet. Fines must be consistent and sensible. What is the point of a state-regulator fining the state broadcaster for changing the name of the Blue Peter kitten? A free for all on fines helps no one.