Corporation tax returns in Fortune Green — from £199, fixed.

Every tax bill is predictable months in advance — which makes tax the most plannable cost a business has. A separate tax savings account, fed a fixed percentage of every sale, converts January from a crisis into a transfer.

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.

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 best salary-dividend mix moves with each year's thresholds and your other income. Setting it once in April — rather than guessing through the year — is one of the simplest pieces of planning a director can do.

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.

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.

The July payment on account is the forgotten deadline: no return is due, but money often is. We diary it for every client it applies to, because HMRC charges interest from the day it's late even though nothing was "filed" late.

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.