Considerations to Change

On 23 June 2026 HMRC opened a consultation on making Income Tax Self Assessment payments more timely. It has two parts. The first is already announced: from April 2029, around 2.1 million taxpayers who have sufficient PAYE income alongside their Self Assessment income will pay their forecast liability through PAYE, every payday. The second is the part still open for views, whether comparable arrangements should apply to everybody else, including the self-employed with no PAYE income, through monthly or quarterly Payments on Account.

Two questions in the document deserve particular attention. Question 3 asks whether MTD quarterly updates should be used to inform the forecast that sets those payments. Question 21 asks whether the £1,000 Payments on Account threshold should be reduced, which would bring in taxpayers who currently make no payments on account at all.

The government is clear that this does not increase the amount of tax due, only its timing. HMRC’s own impact assessment nonetheless acknowledges that some taxpayers may be required to make tax payments before they have received the associated income, even where the chargeable activity has already taken place, and that this is particularly challenging where income is seasonal or irregular.

For a business paid in arrears, this is a working capital question rather than a tax question. The liability is unchanged, but the cash leaves earlier, and for many trades the money simply is not there yet. It is worth noting that an employee already receives their personal allowance spread across the year, roughly £1,047 a month before any tax is deducted. Nothing published so far confirms whether the self-employed would be treated the same way in-year, or whether allowances and capital expenditure would continue to sit with the final declaration.

Consultations are shaped by whoever responds. Six weeks is not long, and the businesses most affected are usually the least likely to reply.

• If you or your clients are paid in arrears, seasonally, or with tax already deducted at source such as under CIS, that is precisely the evidence the consultation asks for. Respond before 4 August and say whether you are answering as a business, an individual or a representative body.
• Model what in-year payment would do to your own cashflow before it arrives, particularly in any quarter where you expect to buy equipment or a vehicle.
• Watch the £1,000 threshold question. Lowering it would pull in a great many businesses who have never made a payment on account in their lives.

The accounting software the profession has been funnelled onto is quietly tightening its grip. From 1 September 2026, Xero raises its UK prices and removes the multi-organisation discount, the very thing that made it affordable for firms to run all their clients on one platform, meaning some firms could pay noticeably more for the same software. There are further changes to licence pricing taking effect on the same date, which we will cover separately. Its cheapest tiers remain heavily limited (capped invoices, no VAT on the entry plan). At the same time, Xero has been locking down its API and charging third parties for access, and its chief executive recently sold her entire remaining direct shareholding. Separately, the individual sign-up journey for these systems increasingly asks for identity verification and personal data that goes well beyond what filing tax requires, echoing the wider move towards digital ID.

Software is a tool, and it should stay one. The pattern here is familiar: attract firms and their clients in cheaply, build dependency, then raise the price and tighten the terms once leaving would be painful. Layer in the identity and data requirements creeping into the sign-up process, and the direction of travel is clear, the systems businesses are being pushed towards want to sit closer and closer to the client relationship, and to the individual's identity. It pays to understand exactly what you and your clients are signing up to, and to keep control in your own hands.

• Establish now, before 1 September, exactly what your whole client base costs you in software, and check every fixed-fee quote you have issued for the coming year still stands once the increase is applied.
• Review what you and your clients actually pay, and actually use. The cheapest headline price is not always the best value once caps, add-ons and removed discounts are factored in. Compare the market properly, some strong options cost far less, or nothing at all with certain business bank accounts.
• Be mindful who you get into bed with. Use these tools on your terms, know the workarounds, and never let a provider become something you cannot move without.
• Trust, but verify. Understand what data is being asked of your clients at sign-up and why, before you commit them to it. Staying informed and in control is exactly what our approach is built around.

Announced at Autumn Budget 2025 and now in force. From 6 April 2026 employees can no longer claim tax relief from HMRC for unreimbursed additional household costs of working from home. That covers both the £6 a week flat rate and any claim based on actual costs, and it applies even where homeworking is a contractual requirement and no office is available. HMRC’s stated reason is non-compliance, having found that over half the claims it reviewed were ineligible. Around 300,000 workers are expected to be affected.

Two things are unchanged. Employers can still reimburse eligible homeworking costs free of tax and National Insurance. And the change applies to the employee deduction only, so it does not affect a sole trader’s use of home as office claim through their own accounts.

The cost has not disappeared, it has moved. Where it used to sit with the individual and HMRC, it now sits with the employer or with the employee unrelieved. For any business with hybrid or homeworking staff, that is a policy decision to make rather than one to discover.

There is also a closing window. Backdated claims for the four previous tax years remain available where the conditions were genuinely met at the time and no claim has already been made. In 2026/27 that covers 2022/23 through to 2025/26, and each year drops out of reach as time passes.

• If you employ homeworkers, decide whether you will reimburse, and put it in writing. Doing nothing is itself a decision, and it is the one your staff will feel.
• Check whether you or your employees have unclaimed years going back to 2022/23. The claim must genuinely meet the conditions for the year in question, so document why before submitting.
• If you are self-employed, nothing changes here. Your use of home as office claim continues as before.

HMRC has launched a Strengthened Reward Scheme that pays informants a share of the tax it recovers on the back of their information. Where a tip leads to the collection of at least £1.5 million in tax, the informant can receive between 15% and 30% of the amount collected, with no upper cap. The scheme is modelled on the United States approach and is aimed not only at the public but explicitly at professionals, including accountants and lawyers, with HMRC running dedicated sessions to encourage them to take part. It targets serious, large-scale avoidance and evasion: large companies, wealthy individuals and complex offshore arrangements. Rewards remain discretionary.

This is a significant shift in the relationship between adviser and client. For the first time, the professionals a business confides in are being actively offered a financial incentive to report serious wrongdoing they become aware of. It mirrors the direction already taken in Australia, where tax agents are now legally required to report breaches, their own and those of other firms. The broader signal is unmistakable: the whole system is moving towards transparency, disclosure and reporting, and the space for anything that will not stand up to scrutiny is closing.

• This does not target ordinary small businesses, it is aimed at serious, high-value avoidance and evasion. But the direction it signals matters for everyone: get your affairs genuinely right, because the environment is built to surface anything that is not.
• Clean, well-documented, compliant records have never been more valuable. The businesses and firms with nothing to hide and everything in order are the ones this environment rewards.
• This is exactly the kind of shift our partner programme and platform are built to help firms and business owners stay ahead of. If you want to be on the front foot, get in touch.

On 2 July 2026, HMRC published its Transformation Roadmap progress update, setting out its vision for a more efficient, modernised and automated tax and customs system. In HMRC's own words, the changes are designed to let it collect more of the tax that is due, with AI and automation moving to the centre of how tax is administered.

This is the clearest confirmation yet of the direction everything on this page has been pointing towards: centralised, real-time, automated collection, built so that less slips past. It is no longer speculation about where things are heading. It is HMRC's stated plan. For businesses, it means the gap between what you owe and when HMRC knows about it is closing fast.

• The system is being rebuilt around automation and real-time data. The businesses that prepare now, with clean records and compliant systems, will be the ones in control rather than caught out.
• Getting ahead of this direction, rather than reacting to it, is the single biggest advantage a business or firm can give itself right now.
• This is exactly what our partner programme and platform are built to help firms and business owners do. If you want to be on the front foot, get in touch.

As part of its Tax Update on 23 June 2026, the government opened a consultation on extending HMRC's power to recover tax debts by taking the money directly from a taxpayer's bank account, collected in instalments. The stated aim is to reach those who can pay but have repeatedly not responded to HMRC's attempts to contact them. Sitting alongside it is a separate proposal to require PAYE and VAT to be paid by direct debit. The consultation closes on 28 August 2026.

Taken together, these proposals point in one clear direction: the gap between owing tax and HMRC collecting it is closing. Payment is becoming more automatic and more direct, with fewer points at which a business sits outside the process. For anyone who manages their cash flow around the timing of tax payments, that is a meaningful shift worth understanding now, not once it is in force.

• Nothing is law yet, the consultation runs to 28 August 2026, but the direction of travel is consistent with everything else on this page: tighter, faster, more automated collection.
• The businesses least exposed to this will be the ones that stay ahead of what they owe, rather than the ones HMRC has to chase. Good systems and forward planning matter more than ever.
• This is exactly the kind of change our partner programme and platform are built to help business owners and firms get ahead of. If you want to be on the front foot, get in touch.

As part of the same 23 June 2026 Tax Update, HMRC is consulting on requiring close companies (broadly, companies controlled by five or fewer shareholders) to report their transactions with shareholders and certain loan creditors. The transactions that might need to be reported include money paid to shareholders, assets bought from or sold to the company, distributions, loans to and from directors and shareholders, and any other transfer of value between the company and its owners.

For owner managed businesses, this is significant. The everyday movements between an owner and their company, the things most never think twice about, would become reportable and on the record. It is part of the same pattern running through this whole page: more transparency, more reporting, and a much clearer line drawn between the company and the people who own it.

• Nothing is law yet, the consultation forms part of the 23 June Tax Update, but the direction is unmistakable and consistent with the distributions consultation running alongside it.
• The businesses that get their record keeping and director's loan positions in good order now will be the ones not scrambling when reporting obligations increase.
• This is exactly the kind of change our partner programme helps firms and owner managed businesses prepare for. If you want to be on the front foot, get in touch.

HMRC has opened a formal consultation, "Modernising the taxation of distributions and repayments of capital from companies," running until 14 September 2026. At its heart is a clear intention: to close the routes that allow value to be taken out of a company at capital gains rates when, in HMRC's view, it should be taxed as income. The proposals would limit the use of holding companies and share restructuring to uplift the "capital" in a business, align the treatment of distributions and loans from non-UK resident companies with UK rules, and tighten the rules around share buybacks and shareholder exits.

For years, well-advised business owners have been able to extract value from a continuing company, or exit it, in ways that attract lower capital gains rates rather than higher income tax rates. These proposals are designed to remove much of that advantage. It is the same theme running through everything else on this page: the line between capital and income is being redrawn, and the planning that relied on the old treatment is squarely in scope.

• This matters most for anyone planning a company sale, a founder exit, a group restructure or a demerger, and especially for the mergers and acquisitions world, where so much deal structuring relies on the very treatment now under review.
• Nothing is law yet, the consultation runs to 14 September 2026, and tax and M&A specialists are already warning how significant some of the proposals are. But when HMRC signals intent this plainly, the time to review your position is now, not after the rules change.
• If your exit, your extraction strategy or your group structure depends on the old approach, take advice and understand where you stand. This is exactly the kind of change our partner programme helps firms and their clients prepare for.

Confirmed by HMRC on 23 June 2026, from April 2027 a flat 22% charge will apply to interest earned on uninvested cash held within Stocks and Shares and Innovative Finance ISAs, for savers under 65. At the same time, the annual cash ISA allowance for under-65s falls from £20,000 to £12,000, and transfers from non-cash ISAs into cash ISAs will no longer be permitted for that group. Savers aged 65 and over keep the full £20,000 cash allowance and are not affected by the new charge.

For years, savers and their advisers have held tactical cash inside investment ISAs, tax-free, while deciding where to invest or waiting out volatility. This change removes that advantage. It is the same pattern seen elsewhere on this page: a route that allowed value to be held or moved tax-efficiently is being closed, in this case to push cash towards investment rather than let it sit sheltered.

• The 2026/27 tax year is the final period under the old rules, so there is a window to review positions before April 2027.
• For couples, the over-65 spouse retains the full cash allowance, which opens planning conversations around how liquid wealth is held across a household.
• This is one to plan around with your accountant and wealth adviser together, not to be caught out by once it lands.

HMRC is making Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) mandatory across all agent accounts, both the Agent Services Account and the older online services accounts. The rollout runs in phases through 2026, with the final accounts switched on between late September and mid-October. Once active, signing in requires a one-time access code in addition to the usual user ID and password, bringing agent accounts in line with the security already applied to individuals and organisations.

Most firms assume this is simple: add each staff member as a user, codes go to their own phones, done. That is the easy part. The harder, less-discussed reality is that creating users is not the same as giving them access to your authorised clients, and HMRC has not built a way to bulk-assign clients to staff. For a firm with hundreds or thousands of authorised clients across multiple offices, working out how to manage that access, before the deadline forces it, is a far bigger undertaking than most have realised.

• Plan well before your activation date. Firms that prepare will transition smoothly; those that leave it risk being locked out or scrambling at exactly the wrong moment.
• Think past “everyone gets their own login.” The real work is mapping the right staff to the right authorised clients in a way that is secure, trackable and manageable at scale.
• This is exactly the kind of operational change our partner programme is built to help firms navigate. We have solved this at scale before. If your firm wants a steady pair of hands through it, get in touch.

From April 2026, the penalties for paying VAT late increased, tightening the cost of getting it wrong. Alongside this, HMRC continues to enforce the Making Tax Digital "digital links" rule, which requires an unbroken, automated link between every step of your VAT process. Copying, pasting or manually retyping figures between systems breaks that link and makes the return non-compliant, even when every figure is correct.

Many businesses believe that because they use software and file digitally, they are compliant. In reality, a single manual transfer at quarter-end can break the chain. With penalties now higher and HMRC checking digital links during compliance visits, the cost of an unnoticed break has gone up, right as the system moves toward real-time, centralised data.

• Map your VAT process end to end and check that data moves automatically at every step, by formula, API or import file, never by hand.
• The most common break is someone pulling totals across at quarter-end. It is exactly the kind of thing a fresh pair of eyes catches quickly.
• Getting properly digitised and compliant now avoids being caught in the rush later. This is exactly the kind of problem our partner programme and platform are built to solve, at scale, for firms and business owners alike.

HMRC has intensified its focus on how founders structure the sale of their businesses, in particular earn-outs, equity rollovers, and other deferred, share-based or performance-linked payments that have been standard practice in deals for years. The central question HMRC is increasingly asking: are these payments genuinely a capital gain, or are they employment income linked to the founder's continued involvement?

Proceeds from a sale have traditionally been treated as a capital gain, taxed at lower rates. But where payments are tied to the founder staying on and continuing to work, HMRC is increasingly challenging whether they should instead be taxed as employment income, at higher income tax rates plus National Insurance, collected through PAYE. For some founders, this could significantly increase the tax due on an exit they spent years building towards.

• This is not necessarily a change in the rules, but a change in how closely existing rules are being applied. Structures that were waved through for years may now attract closer examination.
• If you are planning a sale, or have an earn-out or equity rollover in place, early and robust tax advice is essential. Getting the analysis right from the outset is far less costly than a reclassification dispute after completion.
• It is part of the same direction of travel seen across Making Tax Digital and the Companies House reforms: more scrutiny, more data, and far less room for “the way it has always been done.”

HMRC has been given significant additional funding and thousands of extra compliance staff, with a stated mandate to close the UK tax gap, estimated at around 46.8 billion pounds in HMRC's most recent Measuring Tax Gaps publication. VAT remains one of the largest areas of focus, and reported figures point to a marked rise in VAT investigations into businesses. Penalties for late VAT payments have also been increased.

This is less about new rules and more about scrutiny. HMRC is looking back over what has already been filed, applying closer attention to past decisions. Much of what gets challenged is not deliberate wrongdoing, but judgement calls, grey areas and honest interpretation in an increasingly complex system. You can be compliant by yesterday's understanding and exposed by today's scrutiny.

• Revisit your VAT position, records and documentation now, rather than waiting for a review to prompt it.
• The businesses that come through an investigation well are the ones whose records are clean, accurate and genuinely understood, not just filed and hoped for.
• Keep clear evidence supporting any judgement calls or positions taken, so they can be explained if questioned.

Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, Companies House has confirmed major reforms to how companies file their annual accounts. From 1 April 2028, all accounts must be filed using commercial software in iXBRL format, and the Companies House web and paper routes will close for accounts filings (they remain open for other statutory filings). Small companies and micro-entities will be required to file profit and loss accounts, as larger companies already do, with the option to opt out of having that profit and loss information published on the public register (the opt-out detail is to be confirmed). Small companies will also no longer be able to file abridged accounts. Companies have 21 months to prepare.

Most of the public conversation has focused on the profit and loss change and the opt-out. But the more significant point is quieter: software filing becomes mandatory for every company, and the free, do-it-yourself routes close. This is the same direction of travel already seen with Making Tax Digital for VAT and Income Tax, now extended to company accounts.

• If you currently file your own accounts on the Companies House website or by paper, you will need to move to commercial software, or an accountant, before 1 April 2028.
• The 21-month lead time is there to be used. Moving to software filing sooner, rather than at the deadline, gives you time to learn it properly and file with confidence.
• If you are a small company or micro-entity, consider now how the profit and loss requirement, and the publication opt-out, will affect you.

From 18 November 2025, companies are no longer required to keep their own statutory registers of directors, directors' residential addresses, secretaries, and people with significant control (PSCs). That information is now held centrally by Companies House instead, and companies can no longer elect to hold officer information on the central register. Companies must still keep a register of shareholders (members) at their registered office or SAIL address, and if you previously held that register at Companies House, you now need to create and maintain your own.

Another quiet step in the same direction: information that companies used to hold and control themselves now sits centrally with Companies House. The detail is different, but the pattern is the same one running through all of these changes, more data, held centrally, by design.

• Make sure the information registered at Companies House is accurate and kept up to date, as it is now the central record.
• If you previously held your register of members at Companies House, create and maintain your own register at your registered office or SAIL address, and keep it available for public inspection.
• As with every other change here, the question is the same: have you kept your own records? Just a different set of records this time.

For the first time in 15 years, HMRC has increased the Approved Mileage Allowance Payment (AMAP) rate. From the 2026/27 tax year, which began on 6 April 2026, the rate for the first 10,000 business miles in a car or van rises from 45p to 55p per mile. The 25p rate for each business mile over 10,000 stays the same. The 45p rate had been frozen since 2011, while fuel, insurance and running costs climbed year on year.

Anyone who uses their own vehicle for business, the self-employed, directors, and employees claiming mileage allowance relief, can now claim or be reimbursed at a higher tax-free rate. It is a genuinely overdue change that puts real money back into the pockets of people who drive for work.

The higher rate arrives alongside noticeably tighter scrutiny of the claims themselves. Having withdrawn and then reinstated the online route for employment expenses, HMRC has raised the evidence bar considerably, and mileage is the area where most people fall short. The rate going up does not make the record keeping optional. If anything, a larger claim invites a closer look.

• Self-employed: apply the new 55p rate when preparing your 2026/27 tax return. No action is needed before then.
• Employers: you are not obliged to pay the AMAP rate, but if you do, you can now reimburse at 55p per mile tax-free.
• Employees: if your employer reimburses below 55p, you may be able to claim Mileage Allowance Relief on the difference through Self Assessment or form P87.
• Payroll and bookkeeping software updates can lag behind rate changes. It is worth checking your provider has updated to the new rate.
• Keep the log as you go, and keep it to HMRC’s standard. For every single journey they expect the date, the reason for the journey, the postcode you started from and the postcode you finished at. Not a monthly total. Not a round-number estimate. Every journey. If you are claiming against more than one employment, a separate log is required for each one.
• Reconstructing that at the year end is close to impossible, and a claim that cannot be evidenced to that standard is a claim that gets refused. We are already seeing entire claims disallowed, including small and entirely genuine ones, because the record did not exist in the form HMRC now asks for.
• Check the journey actually qualifies before you check the record. Travel between home and a permanent workplace is ordinary commuting and has never been claimable. Where somebody regularly attends more than one site, each of those sites may count as a separate permanent workplace rather than a temporary one, which can put the whole claim outside the rules no matter how good the log is. It is worth establishing this first, because it is the ground on which claims are most often refused.

The government's free “File your accounts and Company Tax Return” online service closed on 31 March 2026. From 1 April 2026, annual accounts and Company Tax Returns must be filed using commercial software, or through an accountant. Paper filing is now only permitted with a reasonable excuse, or when filing in Welsh.

The free, do-it-yourself route that many small companies relied on for years has gone. If you previously filed your own accounts and tax returns through that service, you now need commercial software, or an accountant, to do it.

• If you used the free service, make sure you have your own copies of previously filed accounts and tax returns. Many accountants strongly advised downloading historical filings before the service closed, as ongoing access could not be relied upon.
• You will need to choose a commercial software package (HMRC and Companies House both publish lists of approved providers), or appoint an accountant.
• This is the first clear signal of the direction of travel: filing is moving onto software, by design.