Straight-talking guides on Making Tax Digital, VAT and staying on top of your money, for UK creators, sole traders and small businesses.
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MTD for Income Tax is expanding to more people as the threshold falls to £20,000 by 2028. Here's the direction of travel and what it means for you.
A plain-English guide to Making Tax Digital for VAT. Who it applies to, the £90,000 registration threshold, digital record rules, and how to file.
Find out if Making Tax Digital for Income Tax applies to you, the £50,000, £30,000 and £20,000 thresholds, the dates, and how the income test works.
A plain-English guide to Making Tax Digital for Income Tax and VAT in the UK. Who it affects, the key dates, and what to do to get ready.
A simple guide to tax for UK content creators. What counts as income, what you can claim, when to register, and how much to set aside.
Confused by bookkeeping words? A plain-English guide to debits, credits, VAT, reconciliation and more, for people who never trained in accounting.
Making Tax Digital is not standing still. The direction of travel is clear: over the next few years, more and more self-employed people and landlords will be brought into digital record keeping as the threshold steadily falls. If you are under it today, it is worth understanding where this is heading.
The short answer: MTD for Income Tax already reaches income over £50,000 from April 2026, drops to £30,000 in April 2027 and £20,000 in April 2028, and the government has said it wants to explore bringing in those earning below £20,000 too.
When MTD for Income Tax was first announced, only higher earners were affected. Since then the plan has been to widen it in steps:
Each step pulls in a large new group of sole traders and landlords. By April 2028, anyone with more than £20,000 of gross income from self employment or property is expected to be keeping digital records and filing quarterly.
This is the part a lot of small earners and side-hustlers ask about. The government has said there are around four million taxpayers with income below £20,000, and it wants to explore how to bring the benefits of digital record keeping to them as part of the wider rollout.
Nothing below £20,000 is mandated yet, and no firm date has been set. But the clear signal is that digital, quarterly tax is the future for the self-employed, not the exception. Planning as if it is coming is the safe bet.
The aim behind MTD is fewer errors and a smaller "tax gap", the difference between tax owed and tax collected. HMRC believes keeping records digitally, as you go, reduces mistakes compared with a once-a-year scramble. That logic applies just as much to smaller businesses, which is why the net keeps widening.
Berified is built for exactly this shift. It keeps the digital records MTD expects and turns plain-English descriptions into proper bookkeeping, so as the thresholds fall, you are already ready, with nothing new to learn.
Want to stay ahead of the change? Join the Berified waitlist for early access and founder pricing.
Related: MTD for Income Tax: who has to comply and when and Making Tax Digital, explained in plain English.
General information, not tax advice. Future plans and thresholds can change. Check the latest on gov.uk or ask a qualified adviser about your situation.
Berified turns plain English into proper bookkeeping, so you stay MTD-ready without the jargon.
Join the waitlistMaking Tax Digital for VAT has been here the longest of all the MTD changes, and it is now simply how VAT works in the UK. If your business is registered for VAT, this applies to you. Here is what it means, without the jargon.
The short answer: every VAT-registered business must keep digital VAT records and file its VAT returns through MTD-compatible software.
Making Tax Digital for VAT applies to all VAT-registered businesses. It does not matter whether you registered because you had to or because you chose to. If you are VAT registered, you are in.
You must register for VAT if your VAT taxable turnover goes over the registration threshold, which is currently £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period. The threshold rose from £85,000 to £90,000 in April 2024. You can also register voluntarily below that if it suits your business, for example to reclaim VAT on your costs.
There is also a deregistration threshold of £88,000, below which you can apply to come off VAT.
Three things:
The most common mistake is keeping a lovely digital record and then manually retyping the totals into a separate system at the end. Making Tax Digital wants the data to flow digitally from your records to your return, so the fewer manual steps, the safer you are.
Berified keeps digital VAT records as you go and produces return-ready figures, so you stay MTD compliant without wrestling with spreadsheets. Describe a transaction in plain English and Berified handles the VAT split behind the scenes.
Want VAT that looks after itself? Join the Berified waitlist for early access.
Related: Making Tax Digital, explained in plain English and the UK VAT registration threshold explained.
General information, not tax advice, and the rules can change. Check the latest on gov.uk or ask a qualified adviser about your situation.
Berified turns plain English into proper bookkeeping, so you stay MTD-ready without the jargon.
Join the waitlistMaking Tax Digital for Income Tax is arriving in stages, and whether it affects you comes down to one number: your income from self employment and property. This guide explains who is in, when, and how the threshold actually works, in plain English.
The short answer: you will need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax if your gross income from self employment and property is over £50,000 from April 2026, over £30,000 from April 2027, or over £20,000 from April 2028.
This is the part people get wrong. The threshold is based on your gross income, also called turnover, not your profit. It is the total your business and any property bring in before you take off any costs.
It also combines two sources:
If together those are over the threshold for that year, you are in. Income from a normal employed job, with tax taken through PAYE, does not count toward this test.
One subtlety worth knowing: HMRC looks at a previous tax year to decide if you are in. For the £30,000 stage in April 2027, it looks at your 2025 to 2026 return, and for the £20,000 stage in April 2028, it looks at your 2026 to 2027 return. In plain terms, the income you report now can decide when you have to join.
Once MTD for Income Tax applies to you, three things change:
You do not need to become an accountant. You do need your records to live in software that talks to HMRC.
Berified is built to make this genuinely simple. You describe what happened in plain English, and Berified keeps the digital records MTD requires and gets your quarterly figures ready, with no debits and credits to learn.
Want to be ready before the deadline? Join the Berified waitlist for early access and founder pricing.
Related: Making Tax Digital, explained in plain English and the future of MTD and falling thresholds.
General information, not tax advice, and the rules can change. Check the latest on gov.uk or ask a qualified adviser about your situation.
Berified turns plain English into proper bookkeeping, so you stay MTD-ready without the jargon.
Join the waitlistIf you are self employed in the UK, you have probably seen the phrase "Making Tax Digital" and quietly hoped it would go away. It will not, but the good news is that it is far less scary than it sounds. Here is the whole thing in plain English, with no jargon.
Making Tax Digital, or MTD, is HMRC moving tax from paper and once a year forms to software and regular digital updates. Instead of scribbling figures into a spreadsheet the night before a deadline, you keep your records in software during the year and send updates to HMRC online.
That is really the whole idea. Digital records, kept as you go, submitted through software. The aim is fewer mistakes and fewer nasty surprises at year end.
There are two parts to MTD that matter for most people.
MTD for VAT is already here. If your business is registered for VAT, you already need to keep digital records and file your VAT returns through compatible software.
MTD for Income Tax is the newer one, and it is arriving in stages based on your income from self employment and property:
If you earn under those thresholds, you are not required to use MTD for Income Tax yet, though it is worth getting into good habits early.
Once MTD for Income Tax applies to you, three things change:
None of this requires you to become an accountant. It just means your record keeping needs to live in software that talks to HMRC.
You do not need to do everything at once. A simple path:
Berified is being built to make this genuinely simple. You describe what happened in plain English, for example "paid £120 including VAT for a Canva subscription", and Berified turns it into a proper digital record for you, ready for the way MTD works. No debits and credits to learn, no spreadsheet held together with hope.
Want to be first to try it? Join the Berified waitlist for early access and founder pricing.
This article is general information, not tax advice, and the rules can change. Always check the latest guidance on gov.uk or speak to a qualified adviser for your situation.
Berified turns plain English into proper bookkeeping, so you stay MTD-ready without the jargon.
Join the waitlistShort answer: yes, if you earn money from creating content, HMRC treats it as income, and you may need to pay tax on it. The longer answer is not as frightening as you might think. Here is what a creator actually needs to know.
This is where a lot of creators trip up. Income is not just brand deals. HMRC counts money and things of value from all of it, including:
If it comes to you because of your content, assume it counts until you have checked otherwise.
If you earn more than £1,000 in a tax year from self employment, including creating content, you generally need to register as self employed with HMRC and complete a Self Assessment tax return. The £1,000 is called the trading allowance, and below it you usually do not need to report the income.
Registering sounds official and scary. It is really just telling HMRC "I am earning on the side" so your tax is worked out correctly.
Here is the part creators love. You only pay tax on your profit, which is your income minus your allowable business costs. Depending on your setup, things creators can often claim include:
Keep a record of every business cost, ideally with the receipt, because each pound you can legitimately claim reduces your tax bill.
A simple habit that saves a lot of panic: every time you get paid, move a percentage into a separate savings pot for tax. Many sole traders set aside somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, depending on their income. It is better to set aside a little too much and get it back than to be caught short in January.
The hardest part for creators is not the tax itself, it is that the money lands in so many places. YouTube here, Patreon there, a brand deal by invoice, tips in another app. By the time the tax return is due, it is a nightmare to piece together.
That is exactly the problem Berified is built to solve. You bring your income from every platform into one place, log costs as you go by describing them in plain English, and keep your Self Assessment figures ready without the last minute scramble.
Sound useful? Join the Berified waitlist for early access and founder pricing.
This article is general information, not tax advice, and the rules can change. Check the latest guidance on gov.uk or speak to a qualified accountant about your own situation.
Berified turns plain English into proper bookkeeping, so you stay MTD-ready without the jargon.
Join the waitlistMost people running a business never trained as bookkeepers, yet the words used in accounting can make you feel like you missed a lesson everyone else got. You did not. Here are the terms that matter, explained the way they should have been in the first place.
Start here, because everything else builds on it. Income is money coming into your business. Expenses are the costs of running it. Your profit is simply income minus expenses, and profit is what you are usually taxed on, not the total that landed in your account.
This is the pair that scares people off, and it should not. In bookkeeping, every transaction has two sides, so the books always balance. Loosely, a debit records where money or value goes to, and a credit records where it comes from.
When you buy a £120 laptop stand, the value goes into your equipment, that is the debit, and it comes out of your bank account, that is the credit. You do not need to think in debits and credits day to day. Good software handles it. But now the words will not throw you.
A journal entry is just the record of one transaction, showing both sides so it balances. Think of it as the sentence "I spent this, from here, on that", written in the language accountants use.
A chart of accounts is the list of categories your income and spending get sorted into, such as sales, software, rent and travel. It is like the labelled folders your money gets filed into so your reports make sense.
Reconciliation, or bank rec, sounds technical and means something very ordinary: checking that the transactions in your records match what actually happened in your bank account. It is you making sure nothing is missing or counted twice. That is all.
VAT, or Value Added Tax, is a tax added to most goods and services in the UK, usually at 20 percent. If your business is VAT registered, you charge VAT on your sales, you can usually reclaim VAT on your costs, and you send the difference to HMRC. "Net" means the amount before VAT, and "gross" means the amount including VAT.
These two come up once your books get more serious. An accrual records a cost or income when it is earned or incurred, even if the money has not moved yet. A prepayment spreads a cost you paid up front, like an annual bill, across the months it actually covers, so your figures are not lumpy. You do not need to master these to keep clean books, and again, software can do the heavy lifting.
Bookkeeping is not hard, it is just wrapped in unfamiliar words. Once you strip the jargon away, it is a simple idea: record what comes in, record what goes out, keep it tidy, and you always know where you stand.
That is the whole reason Berified exists. Instead of learning this vocabulary, you describe what happened in plain English and Berified writes the correct bookkeeping behind the scenes, debits, credits, VAT and all.
Want bookkeeping that speaks your language? Join the Berified waitlist for early access.
This article is general information, not financial or tax advice. For your own situation, speak to a qualified accountant.
Berified turns plain English into proper bookkeeping, so you stay MTD-ready without the jargon.
Join the waitlist