Sole Trader Accounts · West Midlands
Sole trader accounts in The Paddock
Year-end accounts for sole traders in The Paddock, prepared online from whatever records you have and priced by the state they are in: £149 from tidy records, £249 from a shoebox of receipts. The accounts feed directly into your Self Assessment, and the fee is the same in The Paddock as in every other part of England.
from £149 · fixed, per year
Next deadlines
- Online Self Assessment filing deadline and balancing payment due
- Tax year ends: last day for pension, ISA and dividend timing decisions
- Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: quarterly updates for sole traders and landlords over £50,000 (from April 2026) and over £30,000 (from April 2027)
- Second payment on account due
Who this is for
Sole Trader Accounts for The Paddock
Self-employed people in The Paddock trading in their own name: tradespeople, drivers and couriers, hairdressers and beauticians, consultants, creatives, market traders, therapists, tutors and anyone else running a business without a limited company, from a first-year side business to an established trade with a van, equipment and a few thousand transactions a year.
What is included
Everything inside the fixed fee
- Income and expenditure account for the tax year or your accounting period, with a balance sheet where you want one
- Every expense category reviewed for what is allowable, including home working, vehicles and the trading allowance
- Capital allowances on equipment and vehicles, with the cash basis or accruals basis chosen to suit you
- A plain-English summary: profit, tax and National Insurance due, payments on account and what to put aside
- Figures prepared in the format the Self Assessment self-employment pages need
- Records organised and stored so that an HMRC check can be answered quickly
How it works
Sole Trader Accounts from The Paddock, step by step
Tell us your situation
A short message or call about what you do and what needs filing. We ask the questions that determine the right package and nothing more.
Fixed fee in writing
You receive one price for the work, confirmed by email before anything starts. It does not change if the job takes longer than we expected.
Send records, review the draft
Records come by WhatsApp or email. We prepare the draft, explain the figures in plain English and answer your questions.
We file, you get the receipts
Once you approve and the fee is settled, we submit electronically and forward the HMRC or Companies House acknowledgement the same day.
Why IGI
Why The Paddock businesses file with IGI
One fixed fee for sole trader accounts in The Paddock, agreed in writing before any work starts and never changed part-way through the job, however long it takes us.
Nothing for The Paddock is left to the last week. Each deadline relevant to sole trader accounts is tracked from the day you join, with the next four shown on every page we send you.
We serve The Paddock remotely by design: records by WhatsApp or email, drafts back for approval, filing electronic. The saving on premises is passed to you in the fee for sole trader accounts.
A named person handles your sole trader accounts from The Paddock and knows the file, so you are not re-explaining your business to a different helpdesk each time.
We explain sole trader accounts in the words The Paddock business owners use, not in accountant's shorthand, and we show our working so you can check it.
Nothing is filed for The Paddock until you have reviewed and approved it. You see the draft, you ask questions, you sign off, then we submit and send you the receipt.
Local facts
About The Paddock
The Paddock is in West Midlands, England. Income tax in England follows the UK rates: 20% basic to £50,270, 40% higher to £125,140 and 45% additional, with the personal allowance of £12,570 tapered away above £100,000. National Insurance, VAT and Corporation Tax are UK-wide, and Stamp Duty Land Tax applies to property purchases.
| Place | Distance | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Paddock, The | 0.0 mi | N |
| Wallbrook | 0.2 mi | SE |
| Coseley | 0.3 mi | W |
| Roseville | 0.4 mi | SW |
| Daisy Bank, Dudley | 0.6 mi | N |
| Coseley, West | 0.6 mi | SW |
| West Coseley | 0.6 mi | SW |
| Deepfields | 0.6 mi | NW |
Worth knowing
Rules that come up in this work
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax
MTD for Income Tax replaces one annual return with quarterly digital updates and a year-end declaration, submitted from software. The threshold is gross trading and property income, measured two years earlier, and started at £50,000 in April 2026 before falling to £30,000 in April 2027. Anyone affected needs digital record keeping in place before their start date, not after.
Confirmation statements and identity verification
The confirmation statement is the annual check that the public register is right: officers, registered office, SIC codes, shareholders and the PSC register. It carries a £50 fee and no financial penalty for lateness, but failure to file leads to compulsory strike-off. The identity verification regime introduced in November 2025 has added a further check to every statement.
CIS deductions
CIS turns construction subcontractors into advance taxpayers: a fifth of every labour payment goes to HMRC before they see it. Registering keeps the rate at 20% rather than 30%; gross payment status, for established businesses with a clean record, removes deductions altogether. The annual return is where the overpayment comes back, and filing it early brings the refund sooner.
Switching accountants
You can switch accountant at any point in the year. The new firm requests clearance and your records from the old one, which cannot withhold your own documents though it may hold its own working papers until its fees are settled. Agent authorisations with HMRC and Companies House are transferred, and the next deadline is picked up without a gap.
Closing a company
Voluntary strike-off is available only to solvent companies. One that owes money it cannot pay needs a creditors' voluntary liquidation through a licensed insolvency practitioner, and directors who dissolve an insolvent company face personal consequences. For a solvent company the process takes three to four months from filing the DS01, with notice to creditors and shareholders within seven days.
Dormant companies
Companies formed to protect a name or hold a future business are dormant but not exempt: Companies House still expects dormant accounts within nine months of the year end and a confirmation statement annually with its £50 fee, and HMRC must be told the company is dormant or it will demand Corporation Tax returns. The filings are short, but the penalties for missing them are the same as for a trading company.
The trading and property allowances
Not every small income needs a tax return. The trading allowance exempts the first £1,000 of self-employment or casual income and the property allowance does the same for rental income, each measured on gross receipts. They cannot be combined with rent-a-room relief on the same income, and claiming the allowance means giving up the expense deduction for that source.
Questions
Sole Trader Accounts questions from The Paddock
How are vehicles treated?
You can claim actual running costs with a business-use percentage plus capital allowances on the vehicle, or HMRC's simplified mileage rate of 45p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles and 25p after that. Once you choose a method for a vehicle you keep it. We compare both for your mileage and show the difference.
What National Insurance do sole traders pay?
Class 4 at 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270 and 2% above that, collected through Self Assessment. Class 2 is no longer compulsory; profits above £7,105 earn National Insurance credits automatically, and below that you can pay Class 2 voluntarily at £3.65 a week to protect your State Pension record.
When does Making Tax Digital apply to me?
From April 2026 if your combined self-employment and property income was over £50,000 in 2024/25; from April 2027 if over £30,000; and planned for April 2028 if over £20,000. It means digital records and quarterly updates to HMRC. Our bookkeeping service handles it, and we tell you your start date as part of the accounts work.
What records do I have to keep?
Records of all sales and takings, all purchases and expenses, and bank statements, for at least five years after the 31 January filing deadline of the relevant tax year. Digital copies are acceptable. Under Making Tax Digital the records must be kept in compatible software from your start date.
What is the difference between the £149 and £249 fees?
The £149 fee applies when your records are already organised: bookkeeping software, a spreadsheet that reconciles to the bank, or our own monthly bookkeeping. The £249 fee covers rebuilding the year from bank statements and loose receipts. We look at what you have before quoting so the fee is fixed from the start.
Do I need accounts as well as a tax return?
HMRC requires a profit figure on the self-employment pages, and the accounts are how that figure is produced and supported. Very small businesses can complete the three-line account on the return, but once turnover is meaningful, proper accounts protect you in an enquiry and show you how the business is actually doing. The £229 bundle includes both.
Which deadlines matter most for sole trader accounts?
The next four dates that apply to sole trader accounts are shown at the top of this page, calculated from today. For The Paddock clients we diarise every one of them from the day you join and send reminders before each, so the work is done in good time rather than in the last week before a penalty.
How do I get started from The Paddock?
Message us on WhatsApp or email with a sentence about your business and what you need. We reply in working hours with any questions and a fixed fee for sole trader accounts. Once you confirm, we tell you exactly which records to send and the work begins. Most The Paddock clients are set up within a day.
One message from The Paddock, one fixed price
Tell us what you need. You get one fixed fee in writing, and nothing is filed until you approve it.