MTD Accounting for Self Employed and Sole Traders
Four quarterly updates and a Final Declaration every year, prepared, checked and filed for you. Fixed monthly fee from £60, no hourly billing, no January panic.
ICAEW Chartered Accountants, registration Z10zyrJ. Office in Ilford, working with sole traders across the UK.
You did not go self employed to do this
You went self employed to do the work. Fit the kitchen, write the code, cut the hair, drive the van, take the photos. Not to spend four evenings a year squinting at HMRC's website wondering whether a receipt from July counts.
Making Tax Digital has made that worse, not better. The old deal was one tax return a year. You could leave it, dread it, and get it done in January. The new deal is five submissions a year, and the records have to be digital as you go.
For a lot of sole traders that is the point where doing it yourself stops making sense. Not because it is hard, but because it is now constant.
We have three ways of helping, depending on how much of it you want to keep. At one end we just give you compliant software and leave you to it. At the other, you send us a pile of receipts and never think about tax again.
Book a Free Call
What this costs
Three levels. Pick the one that matches how much you want to be involved. What moves you up or down the range is how many transactions run through your business, whether you are VAT registered, and whether income comes from more than one place. We tell you the exact figure on the first call, before you commit to anything.
Basic
£20 - £60 / year
Software and bridging only
You keep your own records. We provide compliant software and bridging to HMRC.
- MTD-compliant software provided
- HMRC bridging and digital links
- Software setup and bank feed connection
- You handle data entry and submissions
Hybrid
£60 - £100 / month
£720 - £1,200 per year
You do the data entry. We review, check and submit everything to HMRC.
- All four quarterly updates filed
- Final Declaration prepared and submitted
- Review of your bookkeeping before each filing
- Software setup and bank feed connection
- Deadline management
- HMRC liaison on your behalf
Full Service
£100 - £150 / month
£1,200 - £1,800 per year
You send receipts. We handle everything else, bookkeeping included.
- Everything in Hybrid, plus:
- Full digital bookkeeping
- Receipt capture and bank reconciliation
- Expenses review by a qualified accountant
- Year-end tax planning and optimisation
- Dedicated accountant you can call
No hourly rates and no invoice you were not expecting. See our full pricing page for all services. For the wider picture on what MTD costs people, including the real cost of doing it yourself, read our breakdown of MTD accountant costs.
What you get on the Full Service
All four quarterly updates filed
We prepare each one, check it, and submit it to HMRC before the deadline. You never log in to anything. See how our quarterly MTD submissions service works.
Your Final Declaration, done properly
This replaces your old Self Assessment return, and it is where every allowance and relief is actually claimed. Software will not go looking for these. We will. More on our year-end declarations service.
Your bookkeeping kept digital
Income and expenses recorded correctly as the year goes, in software HMRC recognises, with the digital links intact.
Software chosen, set up and run for you
We pick what suits your trade, connect your bank, and manage it. If you are moving from a spreadsheet or another accountant, we bring everything across. Details on our MTD software setup service.
Deadlines chased, not just tracked
We come to you for what we need, well before each deadline. You are not the one remembering four dates a year.
Expenses looked at by a person
Most sole traders underclaim. Mileage, use of home, tools, phone, training. We ask the questions that find them.
A real accountant you can ring
The same qualified person each time. Not a ticket number and not a chatbot.
HMRC dealt with on your behalf
If a letter arrives or a query comes in, it comes to us.
On the Hybrid plan you keep the data entry and we take everything from the review onwards. On Basic you keep all of it and we make sure the software is compliant.
Who we work with
MTD does not care what trade you are in, but the practical problems are different depending on what you do. These are the ones we see most.
Tradespeople
Materials bought on the go, jobs paid in cash and by transfer, a van, tools, and mileage that never gets logged properly. Most of the tax saving here is in expenses that go unclaimed because nobody writes them down. We fix the recording first, then the claiming follows.
Freelancers and consultants
Fewer transactions, bigger invoices, and usually a gap between finishing work and getting paid. The trap is income landing in one quarter and the related costs in another, which makes your quarterly figures look wrong before the year end sorts it out.
Drivers and delivery riders
Platform statements that do not match what hit the bank, deductions taken before you see the money, and heavy mileage. Reported straight from the app, these numbers are almost always wrong. They need unpicking properly.
Online sellers
Marketplace fees, postage, returns, stock bought before it sells. Your payout is not your turnover, and MTD is measured on turnover. People get caught out by this constantly.
Creators and side income that grew
Income from several platforms, some of it in foreign currency, some of it paid as gifts or products. If this started as a hobby and turned into a business, the first thing to establish is which year you actually crossed into MTD.
Self employment alongside property
If you have both, they are added together for the threshold and reported separately in your updates. We handle both under one fee. Our MTD service for landlords covers the property side in more detail.
Do you even need to be in MTD?
Worth checking properly, because the rule is not what most people assume.
MTD for Income Tax applies if your qualifying income is above the threshold. Qualifying income means your gross income before expenses, not your profit. So a courier turning over £56,000 with £20,000 of running costs is in, even though the profit is nowhere near the threshold.
It is also combined. Self employment and property income are added together. Neither one has to reach the threshold on its own.
The threshold is coming down over the next two years, so a lot of people who are outside it now will be inside it soon. Our guide to MTD thresholds sets out the dates, and MTD qualifying income explains what counts.
One more thing. Since September 2026 HMRC has been signing people up automatically where it believes they should already be in MTD. If a letter has turned up and you were not expecting it, that is what it is. Our guide on how to register for MTD explains what happens next.
If you are already behind
A lot of people are, and the first year is more forgiving than the panic suggests.
HMRC has confirmed a soft landing for 2026/27. No penalty points for late quarterly updates in the first year. It does not cover your Final Declaration, it does not cover paying late, and it does not cover record keeping. But it does mean a missed quarterly update is not the disaster it feels like.
The useful part is that quarterly updates are cumulative. Each one reports the year to date, so catching up means getting your records straight once, not filing four separate returns.
We take on people who are behind every week. It is a normal starting point, not something to be embarrassed about. Tell us where you actually are and we will tell you what it takes to fix it.
Talk to Someone TodayHow it works
One call to start
Fifteen minutes. What you do, roughly what you turn over, how you keep records now. Free, and nobody will chase you afterwards if it is not for you.
A fixed price
We tell you which plan fits and what the monthly figure is, before you sign anything.
We set everything up
Agent authorisation with HMRC, software chosen and connected to your bank, and your records brought across if you are switching. Most sole traders are up and running within 3 to 5 working days.
You send us what you have
Receipts photographed on your phone, bank feed, invoices. Whatever is easiest. We are not going to make you learn a system.
We file, four times a year
You approve, we submit. Each quarter you get told where you stand on tax, so January is not a surprise.
We finish the year properly
Final Declaration, every relief claimed, and a clear figure for what is owed and when.
Why us rather than an app
Apps are good at submitting. That is genuinely all they do. An app will not tell you that you have been claiming the wrong proportion for use of home, or that you missed the mileage for an entire quarter, or that your second income source should be reported separately. It takes what you type in and sends it.
ICAEW chartered
Regulated, registration Z10zyrJ, verifiable at find.icaew.com.
MTD is the whole practice
Not a service we added when the rules changed.
A person checks your figures
Before anything goes to HMRC.
Fixed fees from £60 a month
You know the cost up front, every month.
We are somewhere real
Olympic House, 28-42 Clements Road, Ilford, Greater London, IG1 1BA. Five minutes from Ilford Station on the Elizabeth Line.
Come in if you want to
Or work with us entirely remotely. Whatever suits you.
Common questions
Our plans run from £20 to £60 a year for software and bridging only, £60 to £100 a month if you do the data entry and we review and submit, and £100 to £150 a month for the full service including bookkeeping, year end and tax planning. Where you sit in each range depends on transaction volume and whether you are VAT registered.
Yes, because HMRC requires digital records. But you do not need to learn it. We choose it, set it up and run it. If you want to see what is out there first, we compare the best MTD software in the UK and there are free HMRC accounting software options that meet the rules.
Plenty of people do, and if your affairs are simple it is manageable. That is what the Basic plan is for. The honest question is whether four quarterly updates plus a Final Declaration is how you want to spend the time, and whether you would spot the reliefs software does not look for. We wrote about this properly in do I still need an accountant under MTD.
Yes. We do it most weeks. Updates are cumulative so catching up is less work than it sounds, and there are no penalty points for late quarterly updates in 2026/27.
We write to them, collect your records and handle the handover. You do not need to have an awkward conversation.
Both count towards your threshold and both get reported. We cover both under one fee rather than charging twice.
VAT is separate from Income Tax and has its own quarterly cycle. If you need both handled, see our MTD VAT accounting service and we will price them together.
Most sole traders are set up within 3 to 5 working days of the first call.
Mandation is based on an earlier tax year's figures, so it does not switch off the moment income falls. We check your position each year and tell you where you stand.
MTD, Making Tax Digital is a trading name of B1 Professionals Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 13872033, and is part of B1 Accountants. Led by Bilal Chudher, FCA, FCCA, TEP, MBA, with over 15 years of UK tax experience.
