Register as self-employed

Your Unique Taxpayer Reference — the 10-digit number HMRC issues when you register for Self Assessment. Lifelong, and needed for every return.

Advance payments toward next year's tax, due 31 January and 31 July, triggered once your bill passes £1,000. The first year they apply effectively bills 150% at once.

The main Self Assessment return form. Supplementary pages bolt on for employment, self-employment, property, capital gains and foreign income.

The difference between what your payments on account covered and what the year's tax actually was — settled each 31 January.

Matching your books to the bank, transaction by transaction — the discipline that makes every other number trustworthy.

The category structure your transactions are coded into. A generic one makes reports vague; a tailored one makes them useful.

Who owes you and whom you owe, banded by how overdue — the two lists that predict cash flow problems before the bank balance does.

Under £1,000 of gross trading income in a tax year, the trading allowance covers you — no registration needed. Over it, register. Note it's £1,000 of income, not profit, and platforms now report sellers to HMRC directly, so the days of small side incomes being invisible are over. Two minutes of registration beats a nudge letter.

Registration handles it: self-employed profits attract Class 4 NI through your return, and Class 2 (which protects your State Pension record) is now credited automatically for most profit levels. Low-profit years occasionally justify voluntary top-ups — we flag it when your numbers make it relevant.

No — your UTR is lifelong. Never register twice; duplicate records cause genuine tangles. The right move is reactivating Self Assessment against your existing UTR (our £25 recovery service finds it if it's lost). Restarts are common and clean when done this way.

Your Unique Taxpayer Reference — a 10-digit number HMRC issues when you register for Self Assessment. You can't file a return, join CIS or appoint an accountant to act for you without it. It's yours for life, like a National Insurance number.

Yes — 5 October after the end of the tax year you first had income to declare. Go self-employed in, say, June 2026 and you must be registered by 5 October 2027. Miss it and file late, and the penalties compound. Registering takes days; leaving it doesn't help.

There's no Companies House filing for sole traders, but you must keep records supporting your Self Assessment — and proper accounts almost always save more tax than they cost, because expenses stop slipping through the cracks.

Anything wholly and exclusively for the business: materials, tools, mileage or vehicle costs, phone, insurance, home-office use, software, professional fees and more. Our job is claiming everything legitimate — clients are usually surprised by what they'd been missing.

Preparation and online filing of your full SA100 return, including the supplementary pages your situation needs. If your return is more complex — rental income, capital gains — the packages above show the fixed price, and we confirm it in writing before starting.

Yes. Late returns are common and fixable: we prepare and file the outstanding return quickly, and where there's a reasonable excuse we help you appeal penalties. The sooner it's filed, the sooner the penalties stop growing.

Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent — whichever suits your business (or whichever you already use). Software subscription can be included in your monthly fee, and we handle all the setup and migration.

Each line on your bank statement — a payment in or out. Most one-person businesses sit comfortably under 50 a month. If you drift over your band we'll tell you before the fee changes, never after.