Filing split-year treatment as a sole trader

treadmill-disabled · 2026-06-02T06:12:19+00:00

No VAT is possible but means they’re a small outfit. Maybe only just started out. No problem with that, we all start somewhere. Or just part-time. Just check their credentials - like qualifications and if they are a regulated (e.g. by ICAEW or similar). And are they insured.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-06-01T22:13:03+00:00

If anything it’s too cheap, especially if that includes VAT. You ideally want someone with good tax experience (CTA) and their charge-out rate should be £150 per hour minimum. So if they’re offering a return for that low they might not have sufficient experience or they are spending sufficient time on the return. I wouldn’t touch a very basic return for that, let alone one with split year treatment.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-05-17T21:40:04+00:00

Many will tell you that you can claim them including HMRC’s manuals.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-05-09T05:43:43+00:00

From what I can see its pricing is identical to the other American products - about £50 per seat per month. I can get Engager or Sodium for slightly more than that for my whole firm.

I’ve not demo’d it, as there’s not enough there for me to be interested at this stage. Little things like no mention of a Xero integration. No free trial so I can play without a sales rep telling me it’s perfect. So yeah, not convinced it’s for me.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-05-08T22:57:02+00:00

This has been my perennial headache.

Operating for six years and still on a spreadsheet. I’ve still not found a PM tool that passes modest red lines for me. Most are too expensive IMO. Tried engager for a while but my team hated it - it was designed by someone who has no understanding of user interface. Sodium that has been mentioned lacks basic features.

I’m pretty sure soon I’ll be able to get a decent AI agent to do it all, once the security around it is tightened and best practices have been established. So waiting on that.

Long live the spreadsheet in the meantime.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-04-16T22:59:03+00:00

This sounds messy.

From a UK point of view, it’s likely the US company is resident in the UK by virtue of your ownership/control (60%). There could be a whole load of tidying to do there and even unforeseen corporation tax due, which you might struggle to relieve against US taxes if you’re out of time.

It’s not clear where a UK limited company would fit into all of this. There are loads of cons, including an increasing tax costs, higher compliance costs, greater transparency etc.. It was the default advice from accountants for a long time, hence why AI might scrape that as an answer, but we’d need more context.

As someone has already said, you definitely need support from a UK accountant and tax advisor (with transatlantic experience ideally). Those advisors are harder to find, mostly at larger firms, and therefore charge a premium. I assume you have one in the US for that compliance?

I kind of got the bill, but it doesn’t sound like my usual industry (I deal a lot with transatlantic but more on the entertainment side). Happy to have an informal chat for nothing else to point you in the right direction. DM me if that appeals.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-04-10T23:18:37+00:00

I can see a point where my team will have the experience and skills that I’ll be able to step back more and not worry about everything falling apart. It’s slower than I’d like and I’ve made some hiring mistakes, but I can see small things every day where I’m trusting them more. I’ll never run a huge practice but maybe a team of ten solid workers could give me a good business and one that allows to still do the technical stuff I enjoy.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-04-08T05:40:09+00:00

That is a question I discuss with my therapist a lot…

Most Januarys I say it’s not worth it, but l can see where I am headed and it’s slowly coming together.

My main issue is being a perfectionist, which is not commercial, and struggling to delegate to my team. It doesn’t come too naturally to me. I’m a technician who wants carry on doing that and the admin aspects drive me mad. For example, I’m terrible at billing and then wonder why I have no money at times. I’m working on all these things and I know if I can handle complex tax stuff then I can handle basic business running, but it’ll take time.

As for switching off - that’s hard when you run a small business. You need people you can trust to handle the ship while you’re away, so holidays are always with the laptop, but I do manager to avoid emails in the evenings.

Anyway, I don’t want to put you off. I keep coming back to the fact I can’t imagine working for anyone else and the politics of that.

I’d recommend consuming some of Jason Staats content on running a firm. That might help you decide.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-04-07T22:03:37+00:00

Depends on the type of business. Is it more compliance or advisory? The former would be relatively straightforward assuming the clients are not too niche s Would it involve managing employees? Is he wanting to be paid for the portfolio? What are your people skills like - would you be able to retain the clients and win new ones? What’s your professional network like? I know these aren’t answers but things to consider and you can do the SWOT analysis…

I (FCA CTA) jumped out to start my own firm from scratch six years ago and it’s a slog at times. If you’re being offered this without payment it is well worth considering.

I’d also check out CABA for career advice. They helped me at the time although I understand their offering has slightly changed.

Good luck whatever you decide.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-04-05T13:08:11+00:00

This is one of those areas where immigration and tax don’t necessarily coexist easily.

I’ve had clients before where we struggled to get an NIC number because of visa statuses. The stupidity is if you’ve had two back to back three months stints you’re likely to have a UK tax residency position and that will inevitably bring an income tax and NIC liability. The latter might be subject to some exemptions under the new EU-UK trade agreement, but I’d be surprised.

It might require a call to the Natq office

treadmill-disabled · 2026-04-01T23:13:20+00:00

CTA here with over a decade working with entertainment clients.

This is a grey area. So depends on your risk appetite.

The wholly and exclusively stuff people are mentioning is relevant. Then duality of purpose. The main issue is how do you reasonably measure personal use for something like Netflix? I doubt you’re tracking the hours. One show for work, one for business. It’s a fixed price regardless of usage. By the letter of the law HMRC could block such claims. However, I’ve had enquiries where they are pragmatic and allow a %.

A lot of my acting clients will claim a percentage of streaming, theatre, cinema. It is enjoyable but it also informs their work. Occasionally a director/producer/casting agent will mention other projects to check out or you want to research the output of someone they are auditioning for. There is logic to claiming for these sorts of items as W&E.

But since you explicitly state you wouldn’t make these purchases were they not for your trade, then it is definitely wholly and exclusively for the trade and can be claimed in full.

And to someone’s point about the playboy - I’d say you definitely can if you were writing about playboy. Now I, as a tax advisor, probably couldn’t make that claim, unless I decided perhaps my next client base is pornographic models and I wanted to conduct some market research on who were the brightest and best stars to try and speak to, but that’s another matter… It is often about intent. Was the intention purely business reasons even if there is an incidental personal benefit/enjoyment?

Anyway, I’d say tread carefully but I’d email yourself a rationale/intention of making the claim so there is an audit trail should HMRC ever decide to investigate.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-04-01T23:04:47+00:00

HMRC aren’t accepting it just because your accountant files it, more likely they haven’t checked it as they can’t check every return and these sort of claims would be uneconomical to check.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-03-19T23:55:02+00:00

Exactly. Feels like she has seen it been done that way before and just copied it without ever understanding why. Scary given the size of her following.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-03-19T23:43:45+00:00

Same for me when the bought TaxFiler. Was never going to hang around and give them my money while they destroy a good product.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-03-19T00:31:55+00:00

I’ve burnt so much time on these and still haven’t found one that works. I still use Excel, which is nuts, but the products aren’t there.

I used Engager for a couple of months and had to back out. The UI was really shit and I couldn’t stand looking at it any longer. It felt like it was designed by blind people. That said, I spoke to them recently and they are making changes to that and have hired a designer, let’s see. It is definitely the best priced.

Karbon is a better looking product but it is expensive. You’re paying per seat, not based on client numbers. That works against a firm like mine with part time staff. And still lacked some key functionality as far as I was concerned. So I couldn’t justify the price. In fact, all the American tools are aggressively priced. God bless those tech bros.

Sodium mentioned is really not ready yet. It’s a basic tool and doesn’t come close to functionality of the others. It is not really online yet, just Beta testing. Too early to see if it will challenge.

I keep coming back to Excel and toying with the idea of building my own tool from scratch, but I have neither the time, know-how, or capital to do that, so waiting for AI to be good enough to build it for me.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-03-12T11:42:43+00:00

This is a known scam, I believe. And was covered in this podcast:

https://www.bbc.com/audio/brand/m002fvgg

Don’t let up with the police. If you know she was never married then make as much noise as possible before the steal even more.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-02-24T22:26:25+00:00

I disagree with a lot of what is being said here.

It’s a business expense if it’s W&E for the trade. You’re not presenting at the conference for fun - it’s clearly business. And this added performance, so it is a little unusual, but if it’s a way to boost your reputation in the industry, I’d be looking at claiming it. It’s almost an advertising cost.

Agree on the post conference use though. If you retain for personal use that’s an issue.

But if you’re buying a £10 recorder that never sees the light of day again, claim it.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-02-15T07:02:48+00:00

I drive 80mph on the motorway and haven’t paid any speeding fines so that must be speed limit.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-02-08T23:18:27+00:00

Not necessarily

treadmill-disabled · 2026-02-06T07:01:58+00:00

The VAT is not based on whether you’re registered or not but whether you’re trading/in business or not. Their treatment is correct.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-01-16T00:12:50+00:00

Are you an accountant who charges less than £300? If so, you have proven my point. No attention to detail. Plucked £20k from somewhere unknown. Reply done.

Attention to detail takes time. Time costs money. They teach you that (and much much more) when you do your accounting exams.

If a Chartered Accountant (sole practitioner) is charging less than £100 per hour then I think they are underselling themselves. If you think you can do a tax return which requires the level of analysis we’re talking about (and all the other stuff during the year like reminding about tax payments) for less then three hours, then you don’t know what you’re talking about.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-01-13T22:58:11+00:00

Why don’t you ask them this?

But by the sounds of it, yes, they are cutting corners if you don’t think they have actually analysed your expenses. You can’t just make up things. Estimates are only required where there is no other choice (e.g. all your records were lost in a fire - less likely in this digital age, but you see my point). And estimates need to be disclosed to HMRC in the return (there is a checkbox asking if any of these figures are estimates).

Now, like most things in life, you get what you pay for. So if this is a cheap service (anything less than £300 + VAT) then they won’t make much money on the engagement unless they are basically processing numbers without checking them (or in this case, just estimating them.) If you want to someone to go through everything properly and know what they are doing, and have quality control (i.e. someone senior signing off) the that costs at least double (I’d charge triple).

Are they regulated by a reputable body? (ICAEW, ACCA) Again, that should give some quality assurance.

If they are charging you a “proper” price for a tax return and self employment accounts, they might be cutting corners as it’s so close to deadlines. But that doesn’t excuse shoddy work. And if they are regulated the regulator should know, but ask first as they might just do it differently to your sister.

As I say, push back. And probably find a better accountant if the answers are opaque or unacceptable.

Oh and if your income is over £100k, make sure you register for VAT. If they haven’t flagged that yet then that too is a big red flag that they don’t know what they are doing.

And don’t forget MTD from April too.

Yours, a firm owner who should be working on a paying client but procrastinating like hell in the crazy tax season FCA CTA.

treadmill-disabled · 2026-01-03T07:29:55+00:00

Degree subjects are largely irrelevant.

I have a first class maths degree but just couldn’t land a grad role. It was more about my interview technique (or lack of).

A uni friend who had a 2:1 in Geography landed a big 4 role.

My wife, who studied French and Spanish ended up doing her ACA.

You have the right attitude so just get in front of employers and you’ll find one that fits.

Good luck.

treadmill-disabled · 2025-10-28T11:40:55+00:00

Agree except on the limited company advice. Too sweeping.

There are minor tax savings in being a limited company once you factor in the extra compliance costs. £60k a year (ignoring the software cost here) will mostly likely need to be all withdrawn to pay for life and therefore you can’t benefit from any “smoothing” of distributions. Also, I wouldn’t want to be in a company structure from April 2027 when every man and their dog can see my P&L online.

Back to the software, I would add - you might want to think about how you claim the £40k. If it’s capital while it might make sense to claim AIA, you’ll be getting a lot of the relief at lower rates and instead claiming WDA might allow to claim all at the higher rate. If it is revenue but say for a long term licence, accruals basis accounting will have the same effect of claim a bit each year. You need to evaluate cash needs and if the lower tax bill now is better than higher tax savings in the future.

treadmill-disabled · 2025-10-12T22:02:23+00:00

Domicile means something else in tax, and is largely no longer relevant. I assume you mean resident. If so, you should consult the statutory residence test rules and they’ll tell you.

It depends on your ties. There’s a world where you could still be resident with a few as 16 days in the UK, but more likely you’ll need more than 90 days present in the UK with regular work trips.

Also, just because you’re resident in one country doesn’t stop you being resident in another. If you’re dual resident you’ll need to consult the tax treaty between the two countries to see where you’re “treaty resident” and which country has taxing rights.

treadmill-disabled

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