Crypto 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.

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.

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.

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.

Ask any prospective accountant two questions: "what's included in the fee?" and "what costs extra?" The quality of those two answers predicts the whole relationship.

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.

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.