How Does CIS Tax Work? A Plain Guide for Contractors
If you’ve ever invoiced a builder for £2,000 of labour and watched £400 quietly disappear before the payment landed, you’ve already met the Construction Industry Scheme. We just haven’t introduced you properly yet. So let’s fix that. How does CIS tax work, exactly, and why does the construction trade get its own special set of […]
Can I Use a Personal Account for Business Expenses?
Let me start with a confession. The first time I asked myself can I use a personal account for business expenses, I’d already been doing it for months. When I set up my first side hustle years ago, I paid for everything — stock, a dodgy laptop, an embarrassing number of late-night takeaways I tried […]
Why is my corporation tax so high? Common reasons UK companies get caught out
You open your tax computation, scan down to the bottom line — and your face does something involuntary. The number looks wrong. Too big. Possibly a typo. Every year, thousands of limited company directors ask exactly the same question: why is my corporation tax so high? The answer is rarely one thing. It is almost […]
Making Tax Digital Deadline 2026: What You Need to Do
If you’ve been treating your tax return like a once-a-year dental appointment — something you dread, postpone, then panic about in January — I have some news that will either ruin your weekend or, if you read on, possibly save your skin. The Making Tax Digital deadline 2026 is no longer a vague threat looming […]
Tax on Rental Income UK: What Landlords Must Know in 2025/26
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes So you’ve got a tenant in, the standing order lands on the first of every month, and life looks tidy. Then January creeps up, a polite-but-firm letter from HMRC arrives, and you realise that tax on rental income UK landlords face isn’t optional — and it isn’t simple either. I’ve […]
How to Reduce Corporation Tax Legally (2025/26)
Nobody wakes up excited to pay HMRC. Yet every year, thousands of perfectly profitable UK companies hand over more corporation tax than they actually owe — not through fraud, not through carelessness, but because they never got round to using the reliefs Parliament wrote into law specifically for them. This guide is about how to […]
How to Register for VAT UK 2026: The Plain-English Walkthrough
If you’ve been Googling how to register for VAT UK rules at 11pm on a Tuesday — turnover climbing, phone ringing, second hire on payroll — you’re in the right place. This is the working guide I wish someone had handed me the first time the £90,000 number turned up uninvited. Here’s the thing nobody mentions when […]
How to Report Rental Income to HMRC: A Landlord’s 2026 Guide
Nobody becomes a landlord because they love paperwork. You bought the flat in Streatham, or inherited Auntie Margaret’s terrace in Tooting, or scraped together a deposit for a buy-to-let — and suddenly working out how to report rental income to HMRC has become a Sunday-evening anxiety, complete with a mug of cold tea and that […]
What Expenses Can a Limited Company Claim?
Ask any new company director what keeps them awake at three in the morning and you’ll get a fairly predictable shortlist. Cashflow. That weird email from HMRC. And — sooner or later — the slightly panicked question of what expenses can a limited company claim before this year’s corporation tax bill lands like a brick […]
