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Chapelton Financial

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Chapelton Financial

Professional accountancy and tax services for businesses and individuals across Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Edinburgh.

23/05/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: How SMEs can get ready for e-invoicing

E-invoicing has moved from a back-office improvement to a planning issue for UK businesses. The government has said that all VAT invoices will need to be issued as e-invoices from April 2029. In practice, that mainly affects business-to-business and business-to-government VAT invoices, rather than ordinary business-to-consumer sales. The detailed UK roadmap and standards are still being developed, which means there is time to prepare, but it also means businesses should start with the basics rather than wait for the final rulebook.

For many SMEs, the sensible response is not to rush into a full system change. It is to get the foundations right now: invoice data, VAT treatment, software capability, customer and supplier records, approval steps, and payment controls. A business that tidies those areas early will be in a much stronger position when the UK regime is finalised.

That matters because e-invoicing is often misunderstood. In HMRC research published in March 2026, 59% of VAT-registered SMEs said they were familiar with e-invoicing, but only 29% said they actually used it. The same research found that the most common invoicing method was still PDF or email, followed by paper or physical mail. That gap matters because sending a PDF by email is not the same as structured e-invoicing.

09/05/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: Giving to charity: Tax reliefs you can use

Giving to charity is often driven by values rather than tax planning, but the tax treatment still matters. Used properly, the available reliefs can make a donation go further, lower your tax bill, or both. HMRC’s latest charity tax relief statistics show that tax reliefs for charities and donors were worth about £6.7 billion in the year to April 2025, including £1.7 billion of Gift Aid paid to charities.

For individuals, the main UK reliefs sit in four areas: Gift Aid, Payroll Giving, gifts of shares or property, and gifts left in a will. Each works differently. In some cases, the charity gets the tax benefit. In others, you claim it yourself. The right route depends on what you are giving, how often you give, and your tax position in the 2026/27 tax year.

25/04/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: Pension allowances

Pensions remain one of the most tax-efficient ways to save for the long term. They can help reduce taxable income, support business owners' extraction planning, and build retirement wealth in a structured way. Problems usually arise when contributions are made without first checking the rules. That is when an otherwise sensible pension contribution can trigger an unexpected tax charge.

The good news is that most surprise tax bills come from a relatively short list of issues. The main ones are the annual allowance, the tapered annual allowance for higher earners, the money purchase annual allowance after flexibly accessing benefits, and missed carry-forward checks. For the 2025/26 tax year, the standard pension annual allowance is £60,000, but it can be as low as £10,000 in some cases.

This guide sets out the main allowance checks to make, where tax charges tend to arise, and how to build a simple review process before contributions are paid.

04/04/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: MTD for income tax: Your April 2026 checklist

Making Tax Digital for income tax (MTD IT) starts from 6 April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000. For many businesses and property owners, the change is less about extra tax and more about changing how records are kept and how income is reported to HMRC through the year. HMRC says those in scope will need to keep digital records, send quarterly updates through compatible software, and then complete a year-end process through that software. HMRC has also confirmed that this rollout will widen in later phases, to qualifying income over £30,000 from 6 April 2027 and over £20,000 from 6 April 2028.

The main risk is leaving preparation too late. Businesses that already keep clean digital records and reconcile income regularly are likely to find the transition manageable. Those still relying on paper files, spreadsheets with manual rekeying or a year-end tidy-up may find April 2026 more disruptive than expected. This guide sets out who needs to act now, what the new process looks like, and the practical checks worth making before the start date.

14/03/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: Retirement planning basics

ISAs and pensions remain two of the simplest ways to keep savings and investments tax efficient in the UK. Used together, they can help you build short-term flexibility and longer-term retirement security, without tying everything up in one place. This article covers the key 2025/26 allowances, the rules that trip people up and a straightforward way to bring the two into one plan.

28/02/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: E-commerce record-keeping and HMRC reporting

Online selling can scale quickly. That’s good for revenue, but it puts pressure on records, VAT decisions and how you report to HMRC. It also changes how your transactions “look” on paper. Instead of one sales ledger and one bank account, you often have several moving parts at once – a storefront or marketplace, a payment processor, a fulfilment partner and sometimes multiple advertising platforms feeding demand. Each one produces its own reports, timelines and deductions, and those do not always line up neatly with what hits your bank.

The other change is visibility. Digital platforms and marketplaces now report seller details and income information to HMRC each year. HMRC can cross-check what platforms report against self assessment returns, corporation tax computations, VAT returns and the digital records you keep under Making Tax Digital (MTD). That doesn’t mean selling online creates a problem by default, but it does mean gaps show up more easily, and inconsistencies take longer to explain if your records are not structured and complete.

This guide is designed as a practical reference for UK businesses selling online. It focuses on what you should keep, how long you should keep it and the reporting rules that now apply to digital platforms. It also flags the most common problem areas we see for online sellers – such as mixing up net payouts with sales, losing track of refunds or treating platform fees inconsistently – and sets out straightforward controls that keep records clean without adding unnecessary admin.

14/02/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: Salary, dividends and pensions: Your 2026 pay guide

Paying yourself from your business sounds simple until you start weighing up salary, dividends and pensions, and how each one affects your take-home pay. The “best” answer also shifts depending on profits, cashflow and what else is going on at home, for example, child benefit, student loans or whether you are close to the higher-rate tax threshold.

This guide breaks down the main options for the 2025/26 tax year and explains the key thresholds that tend to shape decisions. It is designed as a practical reference you can come back to when you are planning the year ahead, topping up income, or thinking about longer-term savings. Where it helps, we flag the points that usually need a quick check before you act.

31/01/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: Companies House ID checks

Companies House has started rolling out mandatory identity checks for directors and people with significant control (PSCs). These checks form part of a wider programme of Companies House reform under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, designed to improve the reliability of information on the public register and reduce the misuse of UK companies.

This guide explains who needs to verify, how the process works in practice, what you need to do for your own roles and what happens if you miss your due date.

17/01/2026

SPOTLIGHT ON: How to prepare for a business audit

Preparing for an audit is rarely anyone’s favourite task, but it is part of running a resilient business. HMRC is under pressure to close the tax gap, completing around 316,000 compliance checks in 2024/25 and continues to invest in new staff and technology.

Against this backdrop, audits and compliance checks are unlikely to fade away. This guide explains what “audit” means in practice, how the 2025 Autumn Budget and current tax rules shape the compliance environment, and what you can do to prepare your business so that any audit or review is as smooth as possible.

19/12/2025

SPOTLIGHT ON: Wealth transfer strategies for high-net-worth individuals

Intergenerational wealth planning is most effective when tax, investment, family governance and timing work together. This guide sets out practical options using current UK rules and allowances. It explains how to combine annual exemptions and larger lifetime gifts, where trusts and family investment companies can help, and why pensions continue to be central after the lifetime allowance changes.

It also covers portfolio tactics for capital gains, opportunities for business and agricultural reliefs, and the role of structured philanthropy. For internationally mobile families, we highlight the shift to the new foreign income and gains regime and the move towards residence-based inheritance tax (IHT) exposure, so timing and residence decisions can be taken with eyes open.

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Chapelton House
Ellon
AB416PX

Opening Hours

Monday	7am - 9pm
Tuesday	7am - 9pm
Wednesday	7am - 9pm
Thursday	7am - 9pm
Friday	7am - 9pm
Saturday	9am - 7pm
Sunday	9am - 7pm

Website

https://chapelton.co.uk/, https://www.chapelton.co.uk/services/, https://www.chapelton.co.uk/about-us/

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