Online accountants for interior designers

It depends on how you invoice. If you act as a principal and add a margin, the full selling price of the goods is your turnover and you charge VAT on the whole amount once registered. If you act as a genuine agent and the purchase qualifies as a disbursement (you pass on the exact cost, the client is the one responsible to pay and is named to the supplier, and it is separate from your design fee), it sits outside VAT entirely. Getting this wrong is the single most common error we fix for interior designers, because it also affects when you cross the £90,000 registration threshold.

Yes, more often than designers expect. HMRC treats painting, decorating, and the installation of lighting and heating as construction operations. If you pay a decorator or fit-out trade as part of delivering a scheme, you can become a CIS contractor and must verify them and deduct 20% (or 30% if they are unregistered) before paying, then file monthly returns. We check your subcontractor arrangements and handle registration and filing so you are not hit with monthly late-return penalties.

Sometimes. The VAT margin scheme lets you account for VAT only on your profit margin rather than the full price, but it applies only to eligible second-hand goods, antiques and works of art, never to new furniture. You also have to keep a detailed stock book recording the buy and sell price of each item. For designers who source genuine vintage and antique pieces it can save real money, and we set up the records correctly so it stands up to an HMRC check.

You can claim a share of household running costs as use-of-home. You can use HMRC's simplified flat rate (from £10 to £26 a month depending on hours worked) or apportion your actual rent, utilities, council tax and broadband by rooms and time used, whichever gives the higher, defensible figure. We usually run both and claim the better one, and we keep the working papers in case HMRC asks.

As a rough guide, simplicity often wins while profits are modest, but once profits push into the higher tax band incorporation usually starts to save tax, especially through dividends and employer pension contributions paid before Corporation Tax. For designers, the marked-up value of goods can inflate turnover and there is also the protection a company gives over client deposits to weigh up. We model your actual numbers both ways before you decide.

If you are self-employed, your Self Assessment is due online by 31 January following the end of the tax year (5 April), with the balancing payment and first payment on account also due then. A limited company pays Corporation Tax 9 months and 1 day after its year-end and files the CT600 within 12 months. CIS returns, if you are a contractor, are monthly and due by the 19th. We diarise and file all of these for you.

We reply within 72 hours, and usually much faster. You get a named qualified accountant who already understands deposits, stage payments, retentions and the goods-versus-fee split, so you are not explaining your business from scratch every time. It is fixed monthly pricing, so asking is never an extra cost.