Accountants in Barnes Cray

Can't pay the bill by the deadline? File anyway. Filing and payment are penalised separately, and HMRC's Time to Pay arrangements can spread the bill — but only once the return is in. Not filing because you can't pay turns one problem into two.

The capital gains annual exempt amount has shrunk to £3,000, which pulls far more ordinary disposals — shares, crypto, second properties — into reporting territory. Gains that once fell under the allowance now need a return, even when the tax due is modest.

People stay with the wrong accountant for years because switching feels disruptive. In practice the profession has a standard handover process — clearance letters, copies of prior returns and working papers — and the new firm drives it, not you.

The businesses that find January easy are the ones whose bookkeeping happened all year — automatically. Modern software matches bank transactions, files receipts photographed on a phone, and leaves nothing to reconstruct from memory in the new year.

Most HMRC letters are routine — a statement, a code change, a reminder. The rule is simple: never ignore one, and never panic over one. Forwarded to your accountant the day it arrives, almost every letter is a five-minute job.

Company deadlines run off your accounting year end, not the tax year: corporation tax is payable nine months and one day after year end, and the CT600 return is due twelve months after. Confusingly, the payment is due before the return — a sequencing quirk that catches new directors.

Plenty of people incorporate too early because it "sounds established", then pay for accounts, confirmation statements and payroll they didn't need. The switch pays for itself at the right profit level — the trick is knowing yours.

Crypto traders rack up hundreds of taxable events without noticing, because every swap counts as a disposal. Specialist software plus the pooling rules turns the mess into a number; guessing does not.