our blog

If you’re self-employed and have to submit your own Self-Assessment tax returns, the new tax year might be longer than you were expecting.

Normally, self-employed taxpayers are taxed on their profits made in their accounting year ending within the tax year. However, the government wants to speed up the tax return process by making self-employed earners pay tax on their profits made in the tax year instead.

Moving from the individual’s accounting year system – or ‘current year basis’ – to a tax year basis means catching up by paying tax on more than twelve months of profits in one tax year.

Unless your accounting year ends on 31st March or 5th April, more or less aligning with the tax year already, this will begin to take effect in the current 2023–2024 tax year. Read on to learn about why this is happening and how it could impact your self-employed business.

A recent investigation into Child Trust Funds by the National Audit Office (NAO) revealed that almost £400 million is languishing across hundreds of thousands of unclaimed accounts, with many children unaware that they could have several hundred pounds waiting for them.

Child Trust Funds were set up by the Labour government under Gordon Brown, creating savings accounts for more than 6 million children who were born between September 2002–January 2011. The government paid around £2 billion into these accounts in free cash vouchers of up to £250, or £500 for low-income families, so each account will have at least this amount in it.

With Child Trust Funds being locked until the child’s eighteenth birthday, and no new accounts being opened since the scheme was scrapped over a decade ago, many parents will have forgotten about them – or may have never been aware that their child has one.

However, the money is still out there and can still be claimed – if you were born between 1st September 2002 and 2nd January 2011, or the parent of a child who was born between these dates, this blog explains what you should know about these forgotten funds.

The most recent and second ever Tax Day (Tax Administration and Maintenance Day) took place on 27th April 2023 – an event that is becoming a fiscal calendar fixture following the Spring Budget. This day focuses on technical proposals for future tax policies.

This April, the UK government published a series of policy updates and consultation announcements, which primarily aim at modernising the current tax system and reducing the tax gap (the amount of tax that should be paid to HMRC that isn’t actually being paid).

Here is a summary of the steps the government is taking to update the tax system over the next couple of years, and who may be affected by these key areas.

There are two accounting methods used by small businesses – cash basis accounting and accrual basis accounting. Cash basis is often favoured by sole traders and partnerships, as it involves recording revenue and expenses when payments are received and made, while accrual basis requires recording transactions as they occur rather than when invoices are paid.

Small businesses using the cash basis method don’t have to wrangle with accruals or most capital allowances, but there is a turnover limit that forces businesses to switch from cash basis to accrual basis at a certain point. The government wants to make this simpler to help new businesses meet their tax obligations as they grow.

With HMRC looking into cash basis reform, here’s how the cash basis scheme could change, and how it could affect your small business.

Eligible parents of children between 9 months old and school age will soon be able to get 15 or 30 hours a week of government-funded childcare during term-time.

Extending this childcare support to children 2 years old and under is one of the measures announced by the Chancellor in the 2023 Spring Budget to help parents with young children go back to work.

With childcare being one of the biggest costs for many households, this extension aims to reduce the financial barrier that prevents both parents from staying in work, while keeping the economy growing at the same time.

Here is a summary of what’s changing with childcare support, when these changes come into effect, and who will benefit from them.

Out of over 12 million taxpayers who file self-assessment tax returns, under 3% do so via paper form submissions. Low demand meant HMRC already stopped sending paper tax return forms in the mail a few years ago, but the tax agency is now removing the option of downloading and printing off a blank version of the form from the government website.

This means that from 6th April 2023, taxpayers will no longer be able to download the form and complete a paper tax return that way, either. This is part of HMRC’s push towards digital submissions, reducing the use of paper and speeding up the filing process.

There are still around 135,000 taxpayers under 70 years old using downloaded forms, but as this will no longer be possible for the 2022–2023 tax year onwards, the tax agency will write to them to provide guidance on how they can file their returns from now on.

That’s not to say it’s no longer possible to file a paper tax return at all, but it will be a much more limited service that may not be worth the difficulty for those who are able to file digital returns.