Rates, deadlines and the things that quietly cost small businesses money. Every figure here carries the date it was checked and a link to the source, because a tax article without one is just somebody's memory.
A new 40% first-year allowance arrived on 1 January 2026 and has been reported almost everywhere as good news for business investment. For a business spending inside the £1m Annual Investment Allowance it is a worse claim than the one it already had, and the change that does land is the one underneath it.
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From April 2028 trading small companies and micro-entities have to file a profit and loss account, abridged accounts disappear, and the web and paper routes for filing accounts close. There is an opt-out from publishing the figures, and a lot of what you will read still gives the wrong year.
Identity verification is now mandatory for company directors and people with significant control. The transition period runs to November 2026, but there is no single deadline that applies to everyone: yours depends on your role and your circumstances. Miss it and your company cannot file its confirmation statement.
Since 6 April 2026 Statutory Sick Pay can be payable from the first full qualifying day rather than after three waiting days, and the earnings floor that excluded the lowest paid has gone. For an employer with real absence, this is a payroll cost change rather than a paperwork one.
The first rise in fifteen years, backdated to April, and worth up to £1,000 a year to somebody doing ten thousand business miles. Here is what changed, what it is worth, and what you need to do about the months already paid at the old rate.
It started on 6 April 2026 and the first quarterly deadline has already passed. Who is in now, who joins in 2027 and 2028, what a quarterly update actually involves, and why HMRC has begun signing qualifying taxpayers up automatically.
Two businesses, one 62% bigger than the other, and the big one takes home less than a third as much. Turnover measures activity. Margin measures whether the activity was worth doing.
January is when small business owners decide to get on top of the finances, and February is when that decision quietly expires. Six habits with a defined action and a place in the calendar, which is what decides whether anything is still happening in March.
The staff party, gifts to your people, gifts to clients, and the December spending that quietly becomes personal. Two of these rules are cliff edges, where a pound over the limit costs you the whole relief rather than the excess.
Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent, what actually decides between them, and why a bad setup stays invisible for months. Making Tax Digital has turned this from an optional decision into a required one for a growing number of businesses.
Five years for a sole trader, six for a limited company, three for PAYE, and none of them is the seven years almost everybody repeats. Here is where each period comes from, what extends it, and where the seven-year idea started.
The main dates fall the same way every year; what changes is the tax year they belong to. Here is every Self Assessment deadline, what each one costs to miss, and the one that catches people who have never filed before.
If any of this applies to your business and you would rather not work it out yourself, say so. No jargon, no judgement, and no charge for the conversation.
