Accountancy & Bookkeeping Solutions for Sole Traders

At The Accountant Network we are here to help sole traders and self-employed individuals with their accounts. Although being a sole trader is one of more straightforward ways to get started in business, our experts will be able to guide you with all your accounting needs.

Self-employed accounting solutions we provide:

• Help setting up as a sole trader
• Tax planning services
• VAT registration guidance
• HMRC self-assessment tax return and SA302 form
• Bookkeeping
• Receipt and expenses handling
• Limited Liability Partnership (LLP) and limited partnerships (LP) accounts
• Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) contract help and advice

Our accountants will fill out and file your HMRC self-assessment form to ensure you meet tax deadlines and avoid unnecessary penalties. No matter your turnover or tax affairs, our highly experienced accountants are here to offer their expertise to make sure you see the relevant rebates or tax deductions you may be entitled to.

Do I need to do a self-assessment?

You will need to submit a self-assessment to HMRC if you come under one of the following categories:

• Self-employed
• Employed and earning more than £100,000
• Earning more than £50,000 and receiving child benefit
• Receiving property income
• Earning an income that hasn’t been taxed
• Director of a limited company

It is not mandatory to hire an accountant to prepare and submit a self-assessment tax return as sole trader, but you are fully responsible for the accuracy of the content of the return. Therefore, you should think appointing a qualified accountant for the preparation of your tax return to HMRC.

There are both short and long self-assessment forms available, and whether you need to fill in one or the other depends on your turnover. Our tax accountants will know where these restrictions apply to ensure you fill in the appropriate form.

Like with most forms, there are some parts that will be relevant to you and others that are not, to avoid you getting confused and lost – we will do it all for you, after we’ve gained access to some simple facts about your business and its relevant accounts.

Some HMRC tax returns require that you send off the relevant receipts - we will handle this for you and group them coherently and ensure they are delivered along with the form.

Never miss a tax deadline

We know all the relevant deadlines to fill in your forms and will ensure that these deadlines are never missed so that you never have to worry about any fines. We will talk you through the entire process and ensure you see the final forms before they are sent off, so you are fully aware of the situation before anything is submitted.

Bookkeeping and preparing a tax return are two separable things. Bookkeeping consists primarily of recording economic events that affect the business. For examples sales and purchases.

Double-entry bookkeeping

For small businesses, the current regulation does not require double-entry bookkeeping. As a result, as a sole trader, you can also summarize your expenses and incomes yourself. The difference between your sales revenue and expenses will give you your profit before tax.

If you are considering becoming a sole trader, we can help you get this set up for you and provide all the relevant tax planning services you need.

If you’re unsure if becoming a sole trader is the right move for your business, our experienced advisors are here to provide in-depth consultation. Like with most business decisions, there are risks involved with becoming a sole trader, such as having to pay out all business debt even if the business fails, however there are other benefits such as the overall lower admin requirement, that we will explain in full to ensure you make the right decision.

Tax payment and National Insurance advice

Becoming a Sole Trader means you have certain responsibilities, such as income tax payments and National Insurance (NI) contributions – again we will clearly outline what of these apply to you and your business, so you fully understand the process and what is involved. Not only that, but there are different rules applied depending on how much profit you make, we have detailed knowledge and understand of these variations and will break this information down for you to help make it easier to understand.

Tax planning is the best way to help manage your finances and plan ahead how your business is operating. Our accountancy experts will help you understand the different tax laws that are in place and predict how much tax you may need to pay.

We will walk through the different taxes that can be applied to your business and ensure that nothing is missed out to make you think you have more money than you would have! Not only that, we can advise on any applicable tax reliefs or allowances that could help reduce the amount you have to pay.

Once that is complete, we can also assist with planning your financial goals to ensure that these are as realistic as possible following learning of what you can expect to have to pay when it comes to tax.

Tax Planning really is an invaluable process for your business to go through to help create accurate and achievable financial goals, and also ensure there are no nasty surprises when it comes to paying your tax.

If you operate as a sole trader within the construction industry you may need help when it comes to the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS).

CIS has been set up to help improve payment processes to contractors and sub-contractors. However, it isn’t just construction businesses that this scheme applies to, there are other businesses it affects. Our CIS accounting experts will identify whether this applies to you or not.

There can be a lot of paperwork associated with CIS accounting and participating in it correctly can take a lot of work to ensure you are compliant or eligible for the correct deductions. We will walk you through exactly what type of records you need to be making / keeping regarding this to ensure you send off all the relevant paperwork to have your team paid on time.

We have extensive knowledge of the scheme and the process and can assist you for however long you need. The monthly reports that need to be filed can be time consuming to create and so we will ensure that these are done as quickly as possible with our help.

There are also multiple branches of the CIS depending on how many you employ etc – again, we can talk you through this and identify whether this applies to you or not and if you need to sign up to any other part of the scheme.