Our expertise
Accountants for Small Businesses in York
There’s a lot going on in the finances of a small business that won’t necessarily show up on a bank statement. Most small business owners are running the business itself, not a back office, so bookkeeping happens in spare moments and gets looked at properly once a year, if that. Turnover creeps past the VAT registration threshold without anyone noticing until it’s too late to plan for it. Cash can look fine in the account while a tax bill or a slow-paying customer builds up behind it, unnoticed. And the sole trader to limited company question sits there unanswered, because nobody’s told you when the moment to actually ask it is.
We look after small businesses across York, Yorkshire and the UK: sole traders, micro-businesses and small limited companies across every sector, from tradespeople to online sellers and one-person service businesses. Some come to us as soon as they register with HMRC. Others come after a few years of doing it themselves, once there’s more at stake and less time to work it out alone. Both are fine.
In a nutshell: we’ll handle your annual accounts and tax, set up bookkeeping that takes minutes rather than hours, and help you make the bigger structural decisions, sole trader or limited company, when to register for VAT, how to pay yourself, at the point they actually matter. Fixed fee, agreed upfront. Plain English at every step.
Why small businesses need an accountant
The compliance for a small business isn’t necessarily complicated. What catches people out is not having anyone to flag the moment a decision needs making, or a rule change reaching into their business, until after the fact.
Sole trader or limited company is a timing question, not a one-off decision. Most small businesses start as sole traders because it’s the simplest way to begin trading, and that’s usually the right call at the start. The point at which incorporating starts to save tax, or starts to matter for other reasons (limiting personal liability, an investor, a bigger contract that requires it), depends on your profit level and how you want to take money out. There’s no single income figure where it becomes obvious for everyone. We revisit the question as your numbers change rather than leaving it to chance. Gov.uk’s guidance on setting up a business covers the legal difference between the two structures; working out which one suits your numbers is the conversation worth having with an accountant first.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is now in force for higher-earning sole traders. From 6 April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income (self-employment plus property, if any) above £50,000 have had to keep digital records and send HMRC a quarterly update instead of one annual Self Assessment return. The threshold drops to £30,000 from 6 April 2027, and to £20,000 from 6 April 2028, which will eventually pull in most small businesses rather than a small minority. If you’re anywhere near these thresholds, it’s worth getting digital bookkeeping in place before you’re required to, not after. Gov.uk’s guidance on Making Tax Digital for Income Tax sets out who’s affected and when.
The VAT registration threshold is worth watching before you cross it, not after. Once your taxable turnover in any rolling 12-month period passes £90,000, you must register for VAT within 30 days, and from that point you’re adding VAT to your prices and dealing with quarterly returns. Some small businesses are actually better off registering voluntarily before they’re forced to, depending on who their customers are. Either way, it’s a threshold worth keeping an eye on rather than discovering by accident. Gov.uk’s guidance on registering for VAT covers the mechanics; working out the right timing for your business is the bit we help with.
Claiming expenses correctly protects you both ways. Under-claiming means paying more tax than you need to. Over-claiming, or claiming something that doesn’t qualify, is one of the more common reasons HMRC opens an enquiry. Home office costs, mileage, use of a vehicle, subscriptions, a proportion of your phone bill: these are all legitimate, provided they’re claimed on the right basis and recorded consistently. Getting the categorisation right from day one means nothing gets missed and nothing gets flagged for the wrong reasons.
Owner remuneration matters as soon as there’s a limited company involved. If you trade through a small limited company, how you take money out (salary, dividends, or a combination, plus what the company pays into a pension on your behalf) shapes your personal tax bill more than almost any other decision you’ll make. The right split shifts with your profit, the tax rates in force that year, and what else is going on personally. It’s worth revisiting annually rather than setting it once and forgetting about it.
Cashflow visibility is hard to have without a finance function to give it to you. A business with no bookkeeper and no finance team often finds out about a problem, a tax bill coming due, a customer who hasn’t paid, a quiet month approaching, at the point it’s already a problem. Simple, current bookkeeping (even just a properly reconciled cloud accounting file) gives you a real-time picture instead of a guess, and turns “how’s the business doing?” into a question you can actually answer.
Here’s how we help
The services small businesses call on most, each with the full detail on its own page:
- Sole Trader Accounts for unincorporated small businesses
- Company Accounts for small limited companies
- Bookkeeping to keep your records accurate and current without a finance team
- Tax Planning, including structure decisions and owner remuneration
- VAT registration and returns
- Payroll if you employ anyone, including yourself as a director
- Personal Tax Return for sole traders and company directors
- Cloud Accounting & Making Tax Digital for small businesses moving to digital bookkeeping
This page talks about why having a specialist is important. The individual service pages show how each bit of the work gets done.
We Speak Your Language
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Your business, your accounts team
How we work with small businesses
Most small business clients start with a conversation about what’s taking up their time and what they’d rather not think about. Some want an accountant to take the whole compliance picture off their plate, records in, accounts and returns out. Others want to stay hands-on with day-to-day bookkeeping and just need the accounts, tax and year-end planning done properly. We work both ways, and we’ll ask which one suits you rather than assuming.
Staying in regular contact through the year keeps small surprises small. If HMRC writes to you about anything, forward it on and we’ll either explain it or tell you to ignore it. If a decision comes up mid-year, a new contract, a chance to take on your first employee, an unexpected VAT question, you can ask before you act rather than finding out afterwards that it would have been worth doing differently.
Records come through ShareFile, and we work with Xero, FreeAgent and Dext, whichever suits the way you already work. Keeping your bookkeeping current through the year, rather than reconstructed from scratch in January, makes both the day-to-day picture and the year-end conversation far more useful.
The year-end conversation is where the bigger decisions get made properly: whether the time’s come to incorporate, how you’re taking money out if you’re already a director, and anything coming up in the next tax year that affects your numbers. We’ll walk through it, rather than just sending the accounts over for a signature.
If you’re already working with another accountant, moving over is more straightforward than most people expect, and our guide on how to change accountants walks you through it.
Frequently asked questions
Most small businesses start as sole traders because it’s the simplest way to begin trading, and for many that remains the right structure indefinitely. A limited company becomes worth considering once profits are consistently high enough that the tax difference outweighs the extra compliance, or when there’s a specific reason to, limiting personal liability, an investor, a bigger contract that requires it. There’s no single profit figure that makes the answer obvious for everyone; it depends on your numbers and what you plan to do with the money. Gov.uk’s guidance on setting up a business sets out the legal differences between the structures; we run the numbers for your situation before you commit to either.
You must register for VAT once your taxable turnover in any rolling 12-month period passes £90,000, and you have 30 days to do it from the point you realise you’ll go over. Some businesses register voluntarily before they reach the threshold, which can make sense if most of your customers are VAT-registered themselves and can reclaim the VAT you charge them. Gov.uk’s guidance on registering for VAT covers the mechanics and the deadlines; we can tell you whether voluntary registration makes sense for your business specifically.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax requires sole traders and landlords above certain income thresholds to keep digital records and send HMRC a quarterly update, rather than filing one annual Self Assessment return. It applies from 6 April 2026 to anyone with qualifying income above £50,000, from 6 April 2027 to anyone above £30,000, and from 6 April 2028 to anyone above £20,000, which will eventually bring in most small businesses. Gov.uk’s guidance on Making Tax Digital for Income Tax sets out exactly who’s affected and when. We manage the digital set-up and the quarterly submissions for clients who are in scope, or already are.
Anything genuinely incurred for the purposes of the business: stock and materials, a proportion of home office costs, mileage or vehicle costs, subscriptions, professional fees, and a share of costs like phone and internet where they’re used for both business and personal purposes. The rules differ slightly depending on whether you’re a sole trader or a limited company. Gov.uk’s guidance on expenses if you’re self-employed sets out the sole-trader position; we set up the categorisation correctly from the start so nothing gets missed and nothing gets claimed on the wrong basis.
Most director-owners of small limited companies use a combination of a modest salary, dividends, and sometimes pension contributions made by the company. The right split shifts depending on your company’s profit, the tax rates in force that year, and your personal circumstances, so it’s worth reviewing annually rather than setting it once. We work through this as part of the year-end conversation and recommend the most efficient approach for the year ahead.
We work with small businesses across Yorkshire and the UK. The first conversation is about your business: what you do, how it’s structured, and what you’d like an accountant to take off your plate.
Why clients stay with us
We’ve been working with small businesses across Yorkshire since Stacey McVeighty FCCA started the practice in 2014. Today we look after around 800 clients from our York office. We’re ACCA-accredited, and we hold 38 five-star reviews on Google, rated 5.0, most from clients who’ve been with us for years.
Fixed fees. Plain English. The same team next year, and the year after that.
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