Sole trader tax returns,
sorted.
Every allowable expense claimed, your Self Assessment return filed, and a qualified UK accountant signing off before anything reaches HMRC. If Making Tax Digital applies to you, we handle the quarterly updates too.
Free to sign up. See every deduction you're owed before you pay anything.
Most sole trader returns: £125 or £250 fixed. The questionnaire tells you which before you pay.
Your tax return, whether or not you're in Making Tax Digital yet.
Everyone self-employed still files a Self Assessment return, and that is what most people are here for. Making Tax Digital is a separate change layered on top, and it only applies once your qualifying income passes a threshold. Around 900,000 sole traders and landlords are in it now. Millions more are not. Some will be pulled in over the next two years, and plenty never will be. Either way, we file your return.
- 01
If you're not in MTD, nothing changes for you: you file one Self Assessment return a year, the way you always have. We claim every allowable expense, one of our qualified UK accountants reviews it, and you see exactly what was claimed before it goes to HMRC. No quarterly updates, no digital record-keeping requirement.
- 02
If your qualifying income is over £50,000, you're in it now: Making Tax Digital for Income Tax went live in April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000. If that's you, you now have to keep digital records and send HMRC a summary of your income and expenses every quarter through recognised software.
- 03
If you're between £20,000 and £50,000, it's coming: the threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028. If your qualifying income sits in that range, you'll be brought in at some point over the next two years. Worth knowing now, not in the month it starts.
- 04
The annual return never goes away: quarterly updates sit alongside the Self Assessment return, they don't replace it. Record OS files the annual return for everyone, and prepares and sends the quarterly updates for the people who need them, with one of our qualified UK accountants reviewing everything before it reaches HMRC.
Not sure which of these is you? Signing up is free and we'll tell you plainly.
Self-employed income deserves more than box-filling.
Freelance and self-employed income brings its own admin, and its own blind spots. Most software stops at filling in the boxes. Record OS checks what you can actually claim, and shows you the receipt.
What sole traders leave unclaimed
Most sole traders are not underclaiming because they are careless. They are underclaiming because the rules are fiddly, the numbers change, and nothing prompts them to look again. These are the ones we see most often.
The trading allowance
A small amount of trading income can be earned before it needs to be reported. Taking the allowance instead of claiming your actual expenses is sometimes the better choice and sometimes much worse, because the two don't stack: it's one or the other.
Simplified expenses vs actual costs
You can use flat rates for things like vehicles and working from home, or work out the real proportion of the cost. Which one wins depends entirely on the business, and most people pick one approach when they start and never revisit it.
Use of home as an office
Part of the cost of running your home can be an allowable business expense where you genuinely work from it. What can be included is narrower than most people assume, and the flat rate on offer is often lower than the real figure.
Capital allowances
Equipment, tools and vehicles are treated differently from everyday running costs, and relief follows different rules. The timing of a purchase matters too, because the year you buy something in changes the relief you get.
Mileage and vehicle costs
You can claim a flat mileage rate, or claim a share of the actual running costs of the vehicle. You can't switch freely between the two methods for the same vehicle, so the choice you make in your first year follows you.
Payments on account
Your January bill often includes advance payments towards the following year's tax, which is why it can be much bigger than the tax actually owed for the year. A second instalment usually falls due in July. It's the single most common shock for new sole traders.
Working for yourself alongside a job
PAYE income and self-employment go on the same return, and they interact: your employment income affects the tax you pay on your freelance profit. Both have to be declared together, which is where software-only filing often falls over.
Tax rules summarised for guidance. Your return is prepared and reviewed by one of our qualified UK accountants.
Not registered for Self Assessment yet?
Plenty of freelancers and self-employed people look for help before they have registered with HMRC. Registration is not automatic the day you start working for yourself. It is triggered by how much you sell, and it has a deadline of its own.
Register once your sales pass £1,000
If you start working for yourself, you must register for Self Assessment with HMRC once you make over £1,000 in sales. You can choose to register earlier if you know you will go over this limit, and many people do so they aren't scrambling later.
The 5 October deadline
Once you have gone over £1,000, you must register by 5 October following the end of the tax year in which that happened. Register as soon as you know you're going to pass the limit rather than waiting for a filing deadline to force the issue.
You need a UTR before you can file
When you register, HMRC issues you a Unique Taxpayer Reference. You can't file a return without it, so if you know you're heading past £1,000, registration is not something to leave until the return is ready.
UTRs take time to arrive
Your UTR is not issued the moment you register, it arrives separately. Leaving registration until January means waiting for it while your deadline approaches, which is a risk you don't need to take. Register early.
Tax rules summarised for guidance. Your return is prepared and reviewed by one of our qualified UK accountants.
Five steps. Full visibility the whole way through.
Provide us your information, we guide you through the process
Record OS identifies every relief and deduction you're entitled to.
One of our qualified UK accountants reviews the return and everything it claims.
You see the full breakdown, what, why, and which documents, before you sign.
Sign up. We file at one fixed price, agreed up front.
How Record OS is different
Less work for you
Upload what you've got and we take it from there. Our technology checks your documents and tells us what's missing, so you're not digging through old emails for a P60 or typing numbers into boxes.
One price, agreed before we start
Three tiers, all published on the site. You pay for the one your return falls into and that's the figure. Nothing gets added later because the return turned out to be fiddlier than it looked.
A review that looks for money
Every return goes to one of our qualified UK accountants before it's filed. They're checking the numbers, and they're also hunting for reliefs you didn't know you could claim. That second bit is most of the value.
Someone to ask
Message or call whenever something's unclear. You'll speak to someone who actually works on tax returns.
You get the working out
Your return comes with a covering letter in plain English. It says what we claimed and why, points at the document behind each claim, and flags anything where the answer wasn't obvious. Keep it. If HMRC ever comes asking, it's the thing you'll want.
We'll tell you what to change
Filing is a record of what already happened. The more useful conversation is what to do before next April, and we'll have it with you while there's still time to act.
Every Self Assessment situation
Employment, self-employment, property, foreign income, capital gains, residence. Whatever your return needs, we file it. An extra page doesn't make you someone else's problem.
Transparent. Fixed.
One fee per filing.
- Multiple self-employment (2+)
- Multiple properties (2+)
- Capital gains
- Foreign income and taxes
- VCT, EIS & SEIS investments
- Trusts, Settlements, and Estates
- Offshore funds & excess reportable income
- Temporary Repatriation Facility
- Expat, statutory residence & split-year
- Crypto, chargeable gains, complex investments
Not sure which price applies?
Book a free 15-minute call with one of our qualified UK accountants. We'll tell you which price applies and what we'll need. No UTR to hand? We can sort that on the call.
Rather just get going? Sign up free and do it at your own pace.
Before you ask
If you're a sole trader or landlord with qualifying income over £50,000, yes. Since April 2026 you have to keep digital records and send quarterly updates to HMRC instead of filing one annual return alone. Record OS handles the quarterly updates and the annual return for you.
Yes. Your PAYE income and your self-employment go on the same Self Assessment return, and we handle the combination as standard. It's one of the most common setups we see.
Honestly, if your accounts are a handful of invoices and nothing else, HMRC's free service will file it. You're paying us to check the work: that the numbers are right, and that every allowable expense actually got claimed. Whether that's worth it depends on how much you'd have missed on your own.
Most services are one of two things. Either it's software and you fill it in, or it's an accountant and you email them your documents. We do both halves. The software handles the donkey work: reading your paperwork, spotting gaps, catching things that don't add up. Then one of our qualified UK accountants goes through it and signs it off. They decide the tax position, not the software.
Yes. Every return is prepared and signed off by our qualified UK accountants. The team includes ICAEW members and tax specialists with longstanding experience in roles at HMRC and top firms like BDO.
Yes. Message or call, and if something about your return needs talking through, we'll talk it through.
The filed return, and a covering letter that explains it in plain English: what we claimed, why, and which document each claim rests on. Where something was a judgement call, it says so and tells you how we called it.
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- Count Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company no. 16058953
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- 128 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX
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- Your documents
- Your documents are stored securely and used only to prepare and review your return. See our privacy policy for how we handle your data.