Tax returns & planning

There are two halves to tax work and they are not equally valuable. Preparing a return is reporting on decisions you have already made. Planning is making better ones while you still can. Most practices sell the first and mention the second. We schedule both.

Self Assessment

If you are self-employed, a company director taking dividends, a landlord, or you have income HMRC does not tax at source, you will need a Self Assessment return. We prepare it from your records, tell you what you owe well before it falls due, and file it.

We aim to have returns filed by the autumn rather than in the last week of January. Knowing your bill four months early is the difference between planning for it and panicking about it.

• Self-employment, partnership and property pages
• Dividends, savings and investment income
• Capital gains, including property disposals and their 60-day reporting deadline
• Pension contributions, gift aid and the personal allowance taper above £100,000
• The High Income Child Benefit Charge
• Payments on account explained, forecast and reduced where they are genuinely too high

Corporation tax

Company profits are taxed at 19% up to £50,000 and 25% above £250,000, with marginal relief in between producing an effective rate that climbs through that band. If you control more than one company, those limits are divided between them — a detail that catches people out regularly.

We prepare and file the CT600 alongside your statutory accounts, and make sure the reliefs you are entitled to are actually claimed.

Planning, before the year ends

Once your year-end has passed, most of the outcome is fixed. Almost everything worth doing has to happen before that date. A planning review a couple of months out typically covers:

• The split between salary and dividends, and how the April 2026 dividend rate rise changed it
• Employer pension contributions, which are usually deductible for the company and free of NI
• Capital allowances and the timing of equipment purchases
• Whether a director's loan account is heading towards a section 455 charge
• Whether the company should be the one buying the vehicle, and what the benefit-in-kind cost would be
• Extracting profit tax-efficiently when you are near the £100,000 personal allowance taper

None of this is exotic. It is simply the set of questions that gets asked routinely in larger organisations and almost never in smaller ones.

If you are behind or under enquiry

Overdue returns and HMRC enquiries are more common than people assume, and the worst thing you can do is nothing — penalties and interest accrue daily. We will deal with HMRC on your behalf, get the filings brought up to date, and where there is a reasonable excuse we will make the case for penalties to be reduced or cancelled. Nobody here will be surprised or make you feel foolish.