Accountants in Lower Hoden Farm

The businesses that struggle with tax bills rarely have a tax problem; they have a timing problem. Knowing the bill in September instead of January — which filing early gives you for free — is the difference between planning and scrambling.

The first tax bill is the hardest because it can arrive with payments on account attached — up to 150% of the year's tax in one go. New businesses that save a quarter to a third of profits from day one never feel it.

The honest answer changes with your profits. At lower profits, sole trader simplicity usually wins; as profits grow, a limited company's mix of salary and dividends, corporation tax rates and liability protection starts earning its extra admin. We run the actual numbers before recommending either.

The tax-free dividend allowance is down to £500, so almost any director taking dividends now pays some dividend tax — and needs a Self Assessment return to report it. The classic small-salary-plus-dividends strategy still works; it just needs actual planning rather than folklore.

If you contract through your own limited company, IR35 asks whether you'd be an employee without it. For medium and large clients, the status decision is theirs; for small clients, it's still yours — and getting it wrong in either direction costs money.

HMRC requires records to be kept for at least five years after the filing deadline for the self-employed. Digital copies count. A cloud folder or app now beats a carrier bag of paper every time — for you and for any future enquiry.

Rental profits need reporting once they're more than trivial, and the rules differ for furnished holiday lets, rent-a-room and ordinary lets. Landlords are also in the first wave of Making Tax Digital — property income counts towards the £50,000 threshold.

Auto-enrolment applies from the first eligible employee: assess, enrol, contribute, declare. The Pensions Regulator does check, and the fines for ignoring it are out of proportion to how simple compliance actually is.