With over 40 years of collective experience in business management, accountancy and bookkeeping, we provide a unique service that encompasses this knowledge and expertise to look after the health of your entire business.
Considering both your personal and business life balance, we offer a proactive and personal approach that aims to leave no question unanswered, no problem unresolved and no worry ignored.

We partner with businesses of all varieties including individuals, startups, partnerships, SMEs and international companies. These occupy a diverse range of sectors in professional B2B and B2C industries, including marketing, graphic and web design, market research and specialised product manufacturing. Along with our long-standing working relationships, we have extensive in-house capabilities and partnerships in the wider business and financial spheres. We make it our aim to help you with a wide variety of needs to provide peace of mind.

Compliance is crucial. Yet, we also understand the challenges associated with running a business, which often include finding suitable resources and associates to support your business. That’s why we are far more than traditional accountancy and tax specialists. We offer complete business support too, as we want to help look after your complete financial wellbeing; not just a single aspect of it. After all, how can you achieve a work/life balance that enhances your business’s growth and allows you to focus on what you do best when we’re not looking at the whole picture? As well as our accountancy, tax and business support services, we provide advice and consultancy relating to your business needs. Find out more about the range of services we offer.

Our first consultation is free. It is an opportunity for us to both get to know each other and enables us to understand you, your business and your exact requirements. Having listened to these needs, we will develop a proposal and go through the entire process. Once you’re happy, we will draft a letter of engagement, which details the service/s we will provide and their associated costs — so there are no unpleasant surprises. It is important that we spend this time finding a service and solution that fits you and supports your specific circumstances.

All you have to do is ask, and we will then take you through the next steps, simply and painlessly. Firstly, let us know if you have an existing accountant. You will need to inform your accountant that you will no longer wish to use their services. We will then send a formal letter requesting clearance, stating this, and asking that they send us any relevant information and documents. We will make sure your entire process is straightforward and stress-free

No, not at all. We enjoy talking through your plans to go self-employed. We provide information and support on how best to manage this before deciding to run your own business.

If you’re interested in choosing Accounting Clarkes as your accountant, we will have an initial discussion with yourself and/or your business partner. The purpose of this is to make sure we can provide a service that fits you and your business’s needs. Once you’re happy, we’ll ask you to sign our letter of engagement. We will also ask to see a form of photo ID and proof of address. You can then rest assured that your business is being looked after capably, responsibly and proactively.

Yes. We have a partnership with QuickBooks, which enables us to share a software licence with you for £12.00 + VAT per annum. Additional licences will be charged at competitive prices. We also engage with using cloud-based accounting software platform for small and medium-sized businesses, Xero, and enterprise software, Sage, to find the most appropriate solution for your business. Along with our management of your accounts, this intuitive and easy to use software provides you with a snapshot of all your business activities and allows you to keep on top of your business’s numbers. Depending on the needs of business and your industry, we will work together to select the right software package and computer system for you.

Contact us on 01252 413779 or 07796954685 to have an initial consultation, email us on gillian@accountingclarkes.co.uk or fill in our contact form, and we will call you back.

Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax changes how sole traders and landlords report their income to HMRC. Instead of one annual tax return, you now need to keep digital records and send quarterly updates using compatible software. MTD is being phased in based on your qualifying income from a previous tax year.

The first wave applies from April 2026, to sole traders or landlords with combined gross income over £50,000 (based on your 2024/25 tax return).

The second wave applies from April 2027, when the threshold drops to £30,000 (based on your 2025/26 tax return).

A third wave follows from April 2028, when the threshold drops again to £20,000, based on your 2026/27 tax return.

Qualifying income is your gross income from self-employment and property, combined, before you deduct any expenses. It is not your profit. HMRC looks at the income you declared on your most recent tax return to decide whether you are mandated.

For example, if you earned £30,000 from self-employment and £22,000 from a rental property in 2024/25, your combined qualifying income of £52,000 means you are required to use MTD for Income Tax from April 2026, even though your profit after expenses may be considerably lower.

You will need software that is compatible with HMRC’s MTD system, such as Xero, FreeAgent or QuickBooks. If you’d rather stick with spreadsheets, there is a bridging software option that lets you send your figures to HMRC digitally. That said, we’d encourage you to consider moving to full accounting software rather than relying on this route.

Beyond meeting your MTD obligations, software like this gives you real-time reporting and insight into your numbers, rather than a static spreadsheet, and automates much of your data entry, reducing the risk of manual error creeping into your figures. We can’t yet say how reliably bridging software performs in practice, and spreadsheets still depend on you entering everything correctly by hand, so this route carries more risk of mistakes.

If you’re weighing up your options, we’re happy to talk through what would work best for your business.

Each quarter, you submit a summary of your income and expenses for that period. The deadlines for the 2026/27 tax year are 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May.

At the end of the tax year, once all four quarterly updates are in, you complete a Final Declaration, which replaces your self-assessment tax return, due by 31 January.

Quarterly updates are cumulative summaries rather than a full tax calculation, so there is less pressure on getting every figure exactly right at each submission.

No. A quarterly update is a running summary of your income and expenses for HMRC, and it does not calculate your tax bill. Your Final Declaration is the equivalent of your old self-assessment tax return.

This is where you confirm your total income for the year, claim any allowances or reliefs, add other income such as dividends or savings interest, and finalise what you owe.

Think of the quarterly updates as keeping HMRC informed as you go, and the Final Declaration as the moment everything is confirmed.

HMRC has introduced a soft landing for the first year of MTD, meaning there are no penalty points for missing a quarterly update deadline during 2026/27. However, you still need to submit all four quarterly updates before you can complete your Final Declaration, so missed updates cannot simply be skipped.

We would always recommend treating the deadlines as firm dates to avoid a backlog building up before your year-end submission.

No. MTD changes how often and how you report your income, not when you pay your tax. Payment deadlines remain 31 January and 31 July, as they do now under self-assessment.

Quarterly updates are for reporting purposes only and do not trigger a payment.

Not quite. The 31 January 2027 deadline is for your 2025/26 tax return, which is the final one filed under the traditional self-assessment system. This is separate from your MTD obligations, which begin with quarterly updates from April 2026.

Your first MTD Final Declaration, covering the 2026/27 tax year, is not due until 31 January 2028. In effect, you will be running the old system and MTD alongside each other for a short overlap period.

No. Each income source is reported separately under MTD. If you have both a self-employment business and a property business, you will need to submit separate quarterly updates for each one, even though your combined income determines whether you fall within MTD in the first place.

This catches a lot of people out, so it’s worth planning for the extra administration if this applies to you.

Yes. We offer two ways of working depending on how hands-on you’d like to be. If you’d rather manage your own bookkeeping and submissions, we can support you with an annual review and your Final Declaration.

If you’d prefer a fully managed service, we can take care of your quarterly bookkeeping, reviews and submissions as well as your year-end declaration. Whichever suits you best, we’re happy to talk it through.

Realistically, once you’re mandated into MTD for Income Tax, you’re in. One lower-income year isn’t enough to take you back out. There are two practical ways to leave: stop trading altogether (deregistering as self-employed or no longer letting property), or restructure as a limited company, since MTD for Income Tax only applies to individuals rather than companies. Some business owners are now weighing up incorporation partly for this reason, though it’s a decision that deserves its own proper review rather than being made for MTD reasons alone.

If neither applies to you, the technical route is to stay below the qualifying income threshold for three consecutive tax years. But since the threshold itself is dropping over that same period, from £50,000 to £30,000 in April 2027 and to £20,000 in April 2028, this is a moving target. In practice, this means your income would need to fall below £20,000 to be genuinely exempt from MTD over the next three years.