Sole traders and partners
Any self-employment above the £1,000 trading allowance, whether or not it made money.
Self Assessment tax returns, prepared from your records and filed early.
We prepare the return from your records, tell you the figure in time to plan for it, and file it.
What you get
- Prepared from your records
- Every allowance and relief checked
- Your figure months before January
- Payments on account explained in advance
- Filed, with the receipt in your portal
What a Self Assessment return covers
A Self Assessment return reports the income HMRC does not already tax at source: self-employment, dividends, rent, capital gains, foreign income, and the child benefit charge once someone in the house earns over £50,000.
We prepare it from your records. If we already do your bookkeeping, most of the return is written before we ask you anything.
The Self Assessment service
- 1A return prepared from real records
Where a figure needs a decision — a use-of-home claim, a mileage basis, whether something is capital — we make it deliberately and tell you what we did.
- 2Every allowance checked
Pension contributions, gift aid, trading and property allowances, marriage allowance, capital allowances, losses carried forward.
- 3The figure, before the deadline
You are told what you owe and when, in good time to move the money.
- 4Payments on account explained
In a first profitable year HMRC can ask for 150% of the tax. If that is coming, we tell you months ahead.
- 5Filed and confirmed
We file it, you get the submission receipt, and the copy stays in your portal where you can find it when a lender asks.
Who needs a Self Assessment return
Landlords
Rental profit, and the finance-cost restriction that means your tax bill is not simply 20% or 40% of what is left.
Company directors
Dividends above the allowance, and any year HMRC has issued a notice to file.
Higher earners
The child benefit charge, tapered pension allowances, and income over £100,000 where the personal allowance starts to disappear.
People who sold something
A second property, shares, or a business. Residential property gains have their own 60-day reporting deadline, separately from the return.
Anyone HMRC has asked
Once a notice to file is issued the return is due whether or not there is tax to pay, and the £100 penalty applies to a nil return too.
Key figures
These are the deadline, the penalty, the Class 4 rates and the payment on account for a Self Assessment year.
31 JanuaryReturn, balancing payment and first payment on account
£100Immediate penalty, even on a nil return
6% / 2%Class 4 National Insurance, above and below £50,270
50%Of this year’s tax, again, on account
2026/27 figures. See key tax dates and the calculators for the full picture.
Common Self Assessment mistakes
- Prepared from bank totals
- A return built from what went in and out of the account is a return that claims only what is obvious. Everything that needs a decision or a record — use of home, mileage, capital allowances, pre-trading costs — is quietly left out, and none of it is flagged as missing.
- Reliefs nobody asked you about
- HMRC does not apply reliefs for you. Pension contributions, gift aid, the marriage allowance, losses carried forward and capital allowances on equipment all have to be put on the return by someone who knew to ask.
- The wrong basis on a judgement call
- Whether a cost is capital or revenue, whether a room is used exclusively, which mileage basis to use. Each has a right answer for your circumstances, and a return prepared in a hurry takes the quickest one.
- Left until January
- The tax year closed the previous April, so by then nothing can be changed. Finishing the return in the autumn leaves months to plan the payment.
Claims found on review of a £52,000 return
£52,000 of profit, before the claims
A sole trader taxed at the basic rate whose return had been prepared from bank totals. These are the claims found on review, none of them exotic.
- Profit as originally stated
- £52,000
- Use of home as an office, on the actual rooms and hours
- −£312
- Business mileage at HMRC’s approved rates, from the log
- −£1,890
- Equipment bought in the year, claimed in full under the annual investment allowance
- −£2,400
- Professional subscriptions and insurance
- −£280
- Costs incurred before trading started, still claimable
- −£600
- Revised profit
- £46,518
£5,482 of allowable cost that was there all along. At 20% income tax plus 6% Class 4 that is £1,425 of tax, and it repeats every year the same claims are missed.
Worked through at 2026/27 rates from our own calculators, which follow gov.uk guidance checked in July 2026. This is an example and your figures will differ.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax
From April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 move to Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: digital records and a quarterly update instead of one annual return. £30,000 follows in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028.
If that is you, the year to get the records onto software is the one before it starts. Our MTD checker tells you which year you are caught, and the Making Tax Digital page explains what changes.
What people ask about self assessment
When is the deadline?
Midnight on 31 January for an online return for the tax year that ended the previous 5 April, and that is also when the tax is due. Paper returns are due by 31 October. We aim to have returns finished long before either.
What does it cost?
A one-off return starts at £150 + VAT. As part of a monthly package, the accounts and your Self Assessment return start at £29 + VAT a month for a sole trader. The fee depends on what the return covers, such as rental properties or a share disposal, and the instant quote shows the monthly figure in four questions.
I have not filed for a couple of years. Can you help?
Yes. We file the outstanding years, work out where the penalties and interest stand, and where there is a reasonable excuse we make that case. Coming forward before HMRC contacts you leads to lower penalties.
Do I need one if I made a loss?
If HMRC has issued a notice to file, yes — and it is usually worth doing anyway, because a loss recorded now can be set against future profits.
Will you tell me what I owe before January?
Yes. You get the figure and the payment dates as soon as the return is finished, which gives you months rather than days to find the money.
Accreditations & Partnerships
