Accountants in Bidford-on-Avon

Most self-employed people under-claim. Use of home, mileage at HMRC's approved rates, phone and broadband apportionment, trade subscriptions, training that updates existing skills — legitimate deductions left on the table add up to real tax overpaid year after year.

MTD for Income Tax starts with the £50,000+ income group in April 2026, with lower bands following. Quarterly digital updates sound worse than they are — with software doing the bookkeeping, the quarters largely take care of themselves.

New companies often have a long first accounting period, which can mean two corporation tax returns for one set of accounts. It's normal, but it's exactly the kind of thing that's cheaper to get right first time than to unpick.

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.

Register with HMRC by the 5 October after your first tax year of trading, open a separate business account, and put a fixed slice of every payment aside for tax. Do those three things and your first January will be boring — the good kind.

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.

The best time to switch is after a filing, but it works at any point in the year. What matters is not letting a looming deadline stop you: a new firm can usually pick up an in-flight year faster than you'd think.

Since Section 24, individual landlords can't deduct mortgage interest as an expense — it's a 20% tax credit instead, which pushes some higher-rate landlords into surprising bills. Whether to hold property personally or through a company is now a genuine question with genuine trade-offs.