The money arrives in lumps. The tax does not.

You get a fixed monthly figure in writing after a 30-minute discovery call, priced on how you are set up rather than on what you earn. A sole trader freelancer with one income stream and a handful of expenses is a different job from a limited company with VAT, payroll and a director's loan. FreeAgent is included, worth up to £330 a year, and there is no hourly charge for asking questions.

Start as a sole trader unless something specific pushes the other way. The tax gap between the two is narrower than it was once Corporation Tax and dividend rates are counted, and a company adds public accounts, payroll, a separate bank account and filings with their own penalties. What genuinely pushes towards a company: clients who will only contract with limited companies, income you can leave in the business rather than draw, and liability you want ring-fenced. What does not: the idea that it automatically saves tax. Run your own numbers on the salary and dividend calculator and bring them to the call.

IR35 applies if you work through your own company and the reality of the engagement looks like employment. No calculator can tell you your status, and neither can a contract on its own: it turns on control over how and when you work, whether a substitute is genuinely allowed, mutuality of obligation, financial risk and how embedded you are in the client's organisation. For medium and large private-sector clients and all public-sector clients, the client decides and issues a Status Determination Statement, which you can and should challenge if it is wrong. We review the written contract and your actual working practices.

Costs incurred wholly and exclusively for the business: software, professional subscriptions, equipment, insurance, accountancy fees, and the business proportion of a phone, car or room at home. The reliable arguments are travel to a client site that has become your normal place of work, everyday clothing, and entertaining. Home-office claims are fine if the basis is defensible — rooms, hours, actual costs — and weak if it is a round number picked because it looked safe. Keep the records digitally as you go; under Making Tax Digital they must be digital anyway, and receipts reconstructed in January are the ones that get disallowed.

Registration is compulsory once VAT-taxable turnover exceeds £90,000 in any rolling twelve-month period, or when you expect to exceed it within the next thirty days. Registering voluntarily below that makes sense when your clients are VAT-registered businesses who reclaim it anyway, because you then recover VAT on your own costs. If you invoice consumers or small unregistered businesses, voluntary registration simply makes you 20% more expensive. Watch the rolling test — it is not your accounting year, and crossing it unnoticed can mean paying HMRC VAT you never charged.

Because payments on account land at the same time. In your first full year you pay the tax for that year by 31 January, plus a first payment on account for the next year — commonly half the bill again — on the same date, then a second on 31 July. So a £6,000 liability can mean £9,000 leaving the account in January. They are advance payments towards next year's bill, so the total tax is unchanged; only the timing catches people out. If your income has genuinely fallen you can apply to reduce the payments, but reduce them too far and HMRC charges interest on the shortfall.

The fee stays the same and the work does not stop — returns, filings and deadlines still apply in a bad quarter. Fixed monthly pricing is worse value in a quiet year and better in a busy one, in exchange for a number you can budget. If income has dropped materially and looks like staying there, tell us. Reducing payments on account, changing VAT scheme or stepping down a plan are all real options, and plan changes take effect from the next billing cycle.

Yes, at any point in the year. You tell us to go ahead, we write to your current accountant for professional clearance and your records, register as your agent with HMRC and set up the software while we wait. Most handovers are done within a couple of weeks and the delay is usually the other firm's reply. Two things to sort at your end: check the notice period in your existing engagement letter, and make sure any work you have already paid for has actually been completed.