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Monday 9:30am - 5:30pm Tuesday 9:30am - 5:30pm Wednesday 9:30am - 5pm Thursday 9:30am - 5:30pm Friday 10am - 6pm Saturday 10am - 6pm

Certax Accounting - Sandbach

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Certax Accounting - Sandbach

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We’re a friendly firm of Chartered Certified Accountants who believe in explaining things in plain English – not accounting jargon.

We help businesses & individuals with their accounting & taxation needs, including PAYE, VAT & MTD

13/10/2026

- Personal Tax Account and HMRC App – Are you using yours?

UK taxpayers can sign up for a personal tax account to use either online or via a phone App and make use of this to keep tabs on their tax and National Insurance, as well as notify HMRC about changes of name and address or to transfer part of their personal allowance to their spouse without having to spend time on the phone or filling in and posting off forms.

Search online for www.gov.uk/personal tax account or www.gov.uk/guidance/download-the-HMRC-app

If you think you’ve not been receiving much in the post from HMRC recently, then it could be because at some point you have signed up for a PTA (Personal Tax Account) and even if you only logged in once, HMRC is probably now using your online PTA account to communicate with you, sending your Tax coding notices and statements of account to you online rather than in the post.

If you haven’t signed up for your PTA yet, then it is worth doing so, as surely anything is better than waiting for a letter in the post or sitting on the phone for ages waiting for HMRC to pick up the call.

If you run a business, then you can also sign up for a Business Tax Account, and this will let you keep an eye on the information HMRC holds about your business taxes, such as PAYE or VAT.

09/10/2026

MTD for gross income over 30k is just 6 months away!

For those of you who will be mandated into MTD for Income Tax in April 2027, there are now just 6 months left for you to plan how you will approach Making Tax Digital. You can certainly learn from the experience that the 50k cohort has had to date, and one of the key lessons is probably to plan how you will keep your records and submit them to HMRC now rather than next April.

Cost can be a major obstacle to choosing how to maintain your accounting records, as well as the sheer volume of record-keeping options available to you. One of the first steps should be to chat to your accountant and see what options they can support you with.

We provide bookkeeping for clients and submit QU’s from VT software, but we are also assisting clients who wish to use cloud accounting software (which gives them online visibility of their numbers). Some clients are choosing to pay monthly subscriptions to software such as QuickBooks and Xero, and some, as a result of who they bank with, can choose to use software such as Free Agent at no charge.

One of the key questions with software has to be: does it meet all my needs? Can my accountant access the software to check my entries? Does the software allow me to file everything I need? Some can file the 4 quarterly updates but cannot be used to file the final year-end submission, which could be a problem if you normally do your own self-assessment tax return…

05/10/2026

Glass half empty or half full?

Can you believe we’re halfway through the 2026-27 tax year! I seem to have blinked, and 6 months have whizzed past.

For those already mandated to do MTD for Income Tax, that means it's time to prepare and file your 2nd quarterly update. Hopefully it won't be quite as stressful as the first QU, as systems should now be in place and because you’ve already used your software to file with HMRC once you know you’re signed up correctly, the links are there, and the period dates are correct.

The main thing to remember this time round is that you need to file figures for the full 6 months of the tax year; this isn’t a case of I’ve filed Apr, May and Jun, so this time I file Jul, Aug and Sep – with MTD you file 3 months in QU1, 6 months in QU2 and 9 months in QU3 (and so on) 🙂

18/09/2026

Train selfie as I head down to Bristol for the organised by and with some excellent CPD being provided by - Accounts Therapy is the second group of people that have kept me sane in this year of increasing workloads and I may have sneaked Betty Baa 🐑 and her mug of Positivi-tea in my suitcase so she can see what all this accountants therapy lark is about 🥸

16/09/2026

This year has been hectic (understatement!) work-wise, with the introduction of Making Tax Difficult (whoops! Sorry! Digital).

There have been two groups in particular that have really helped me get through the hard work and keep my business — as well as my sanity — on the right track.

In the spotlight today is The Social Flock.

Without The Social Flock, my attempts at social media would probably be pretty mediocre and very sporadic. But with regular online content-writing sessions, planning sessions, webinars packed with hints and tips, and lots of advice and support from fellow Flockers, you get my stunning pictures and witty soundbites instead!

So, to remind me of my social media goals, here is Betty Baa — sent to watch over me by the one and only Baarbara (mastermind of The Social Flock — ssh! Don't tell Becs ).

As you can see, Betty Baa has already acquired her own tea mug, full of Positivi-Tea, and made herself comfortable on my desk.

If you’d like to get your own social media on track, while gaining a bunch of interesting (in many and varied ways!) new colleagues to bounce ideas off, share experiences with and ask questions of, why not give The Social Flock a go?

You can use my shiny new affiliate link: https://socialmediaexec.co.uk/the-social-flock/?ref=sharon.joyce

And if nothing else, you’ve now met a Positivi-Tea-drinking sheep called Betty Baa.

09/09/2026

It feels like a lot of my clients are accessing their pension pots these days (a combination of the age profile of my clients and the change in tax rules for pension savings, perhaps?), so I thought a reminder about how the drawdowns might be taxed is in order…

When you first take a pension drawdown, the pension company will pay tax to HMRC, often at an emergency tax rate. After the first withdrawal, HMRC should issue a tax code to the Pension company, so the tax deducted more closely reflects the tax you owe on your pension income (which depends on your other income, state pension, employment income, etc.).

You can put a claim in to recover some or all of the tax taken by HMRC on the initial drawdown if it's not going to be a regular event and you believe you will not owe that much tax at the end of the tax year; for example, perhaps you have ceased work, and you’ve been taxed on the pension drawdown as a higher rate taxpayer but will only be a basic rate taxpayer this year.

The HMRC forms you can use in the year (and/or if you don’t file an annual self-assessment tax return):

Form P55 – You’ve flexibly accessed part of your pension and are not planning regular withdrawals.
Form P53 – Small pension lump sum (usually under £10,000 while still working/receiving other income).
Form P53Z – You have emptied your entire pension pot but are still working/receiving other income.
Form P50 – You’ve stopped working, taken a pension lump sum and don’t expect further income in the year.

When you fill the forms in, you’ll need to provide income estimates for the tax year for all sources of income – Employment, Dividends, Interest, other pensions, Property Rental, etc. Don’t assume that HMRC will fill in the blanks; you need to put everything on the form.

And remember, usually 25% of your pension drawdown is tax-free cash, and only the other 75% has had tax deducted, so make sure you know what figures you need to put on the reclaim form.

04/09/2026

VAT Thresholds – it’s a rolling 12 months!

I’ve recently had two sole trader clients who found themselves having to navigate a late VAT registration. In both cases, the problem was the same…

They hadn’t been checking their rolling 12-month turnover.

Both clients had looked at their turnover for the year and knew that their 2024/25 turnover was below the VAT registration threshold, but their turnover had increased during 2025/26 – and because their costs had increased too, they didn't notice the increased sales as their bank balance was static.

The problem is that the VAT registration test doesn't look at your turnover for your tax year or accounting year. You need to keep checking your taxable turnover for the previous 12 months.

So, for example, if your turnover for the year to 31 March is £85,000, that doesn't mean you're safely below the VAT threshold on 30th April. Your rolling 12-month figure could be over £90,000 because of the pattern of your sales.

And here's something I never thought I'd say… I may have found a benefit of MTD for Income Tax! For those in MTD, quarterly updates ensure that you're regularly recording and reviewing your business income. That could make an increase in turnover much more obvious earlier in the year.

It wouldn't replace keeping an eye on your VAT position – but it could give you an earlier warning.

Of course, you don't need MTD to do this. A simple spreadsheet – or even a handwritten list of your monthly sales – can help you keep track.

For one of our clients, the increase in rolling turnover was a genuine surprise, but for the other, we had been telling the client for some time that they were sailing close to the VAT threshold and reminding them about the rolling 12-month test.

So here's your reminder:
• Don't just check your turnover at your year-end.
• Keep an eye on your rolling 12-month taxable turnover throughout the year.
• And if you're getting close to £90,000, speak to your accountant!

Finding out you've gone over the threshold after the event can make the VAT registration process considerably more painful than it needs to be.

02/09/2026

Companies House default address – Why is my address there?

If your company uses a paid registered office service, you need to be aware of this. A client recently discovered that their director's service address had been changed to the Companies House default address – and getting it corrected has proved far from straightforward.

What happened?
The company used a registered office service. The provider moved premises and correctly filed the AD01 to tell Companies House that the company's registered office had changed. But they didn't update the director's service address.

If the director's service address is the company's registered office, changing the registered office doesn't necessarily mean that all the other relevant records have been updated as you might expect.

If Companies House correspondence sent to the old address is returned, it will consider the address ineffective and can take action, including changing the service address to the Companies House default address.

Once that happens, getting your address restored isn't necessarily as simple as submitting another form.

So, if your company changes its registered office, don't just check that the AD01 has been filed.

• Check the company's registered office address
• Check every director's service address
• Check the service address of any People with Significant Control (PSCs)
• Make sure the changes actually appear on the Companies House register

And if you're using a registered office service, don't assume that the provider has updated everything that needs updating - Check the Companies House record yourself!

23/08/2026

A week away from the office and my annual transformation from accountant to shooting match organiser. Exhausted but happy, had a great time as always, with a really good group of junior athletes, coaches and my amazing volunteer staff 😎

13/08/2026

I think my office assistant has the right idea today…

Address

9 Vicarage Gardens
Sandbach
CW113BZ

Opening Hours

Monday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Tuesday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Wednesday	9:30am - 5pm
Thursday	9:30am - 5:30pm
Friday	10am - 6pm
Saturday	10am - 6pm

Website

http://www.certaxsandbach.co.uk/

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