What Your Accountant Should Actually Be Doing For Your Business Right Now
The new tax year started on 6 April. Your accounts are up to date. The filings are done. Both you and your accountant breathe out and then get on with things.
But here’s a question worth sitting with before the year gets away from you: what does your accountant actually do for your business between the submissions?
If the honest answer is “keeps the records and hits the deadlines,” that’s not a bad answer.
It’s just not the full picture of what accounting can do for a growing business. And the start of a fresh tax year is the best possible moment to ask whether you’re getting it.
Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling
Most accounting relationships are built around what you’re legally required to do; corporation tax, VAT, payroll, Companies House filings, self assessment. All of it essential. All of it worth getting right.
But compliance is the floor. It’s the minimum. The businesses that grow with the most confidence aren’t just staying compliant, they’re using their financial data to make better decisions.
They’re not guessing about cash flow in September. They’re not discovering their margins by product line only when they ask someone to run the numbers at year end.
They know where they are financially, week to week, because someone’s made it their job to tell them.
That’s the difference between reactive bookkeeping and proactive financial strategy and it’s a bigger gap than most people realise.
What proactive accounting actually looks like in practice
Proactive accounting isn’t a product name or a tier on a pricing menu. It’s a way of working with your numbers. In practice, for a small business or founder-led company, it looks like this:
Knowing your margin by revenue stream, not just in total.
A lot of growing businesses track revenue closely and profit loosely. Knowing you’ve billed £250,000 this year is less useful than knowing which services or products are actually generating profit — and which are being propped up by the ones that are.
If your accountant isn’t helping you see this, you’re steering without a map.
Cash flow forecasting, not just cash flow reporting.
Reporting tells you where your money went. Forecasting tells you where it’s going. For businesses with variable revenue, agencies, studios, tech startups, that distinction can be the difference between a confident hiring decision and a panicked one.
A good accountant builds a forecast with you, not just for you.
Regular conversations, not just annual reviews.
If you’re only speaking to your accountant around a January deadline or a year-end, you’re not doing strategy, you’re doing admin.
A proactive accountant is in the conversation when you’re thinking about a new hire, a pricing change, expanding a service line, or timing a significant purchase. That kind of input is worth far more than any individual filing.
Tax planning that happens before the year ends, not after.
Salary versus dividend structure. R&D tax credits. Pension contributions. Timing of asset purchases.
These decisions only work when they’re made with the year in front of you, not behind you. Most missed tax savings aren’t errors, they’re missed windows.
Making Tax Digital: what’s actually changed this April
You’ve probably heard the acronym MTD appearing more often. Here’s what it means clearly.
From 6 April 2026, sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000 are now legally required to maintain digital records and submit income and expense summaries to HMRC every quarter, using approved software.
This replaces the single annual Self Assessment return for that group of taxpayers.
If you run a limited company, MTD for Income Tax does not currently apply to you.
This is one of the most commonly misunderstood points in the whole MTD rollout. MTD for Corporation Tax is a separate government consultation with no confirmed start date. Limited companies continue to file corporation tax and annual accounts as before.
For sole traders in scope from April 2026, the first quarterly deadline falls on 7 August 2026. HMRC has confirmed a soft landing for the 2026/27 tax year — penalty points will not be issued for late quarterly updates during this first year, though penalties for late tax payments still apply from day one.
The practical upside of MTD is worth acknowledging: quarterly digital submissions mean your financial picture is being updated continuously throughout the year.
For businesses that haven’t yet built in regular financial reviews, that’s a nudge in the right direction — even if the compliance requirement is what triggered it.
What else changed on 6 April 2026?
Beyond MTD, a few other changes came into effect that are directly relevant for founders and directors:
Dividend tax rates increased. Basic-rate taxpayers now pay 10.75% on dividends above the £500 allowance (up from 8.75%), and higher-rate taxpayers pay 35.75% (up from 33.75%). If you’re a director drawing income through a mix of salary and dividends, this is worth reviewing at the start of every new tax year — the most tax-efficient split changes as rates change.
Capital Gains Tax on business asset disposals rose again. Business Asset Disposal Relief (formerly Entrepreneurs’ Relief) now carries a rate of 18%, up from 14% in the previous year. If you’re considering a business sale or significant asset disposal, the timing carries more tax consequence than it did two years ago.
Frozen thresholds continue to mean a quiet tax rise. The personal allowance remains at £12,570, and the higher rate threshold at £50,270 — where both have been since 2022, and where they’re expected to stay until at least 2028. As salaries rise with inflation, more income falls into higher tax bands without any official rate change.
It’s a hidden increase with real consequences, and it’s exactly the kind of thing a proactive accountant factors into your income planning rather than leaving you to discover in January.
Five questions worth asking right now
As the new tax year begins, here are five questions that are worth putting to your accountant — or thinking through yourself — before you’re six months in:
- Do I know what my profit margin is by revenue stream, not just as a total figure?
- Do I have a cash flow forecast for the next three to six months?
- When did I last have a conversation with my accountant that wasn’t about a deadline?
- Has my salary and dividend structure been reviewed in light of the 2026 rate changes?
- Am I claiming all available reliefs — including R&D tax credits, if my business is eligible?
If several of those are drawing a blank, it doesn’t necessarily mean your accountant is doing a poor job. It may simply mean you’re on a compliance-only service and that you haven’t yet made the step into advisory.
The start of the tax year is the easiest moment to change this
There’s a reason we raise this in April rather than October.
The new tax year is the one point in the financial calendar when the slate is genuinely clean. You have twelve months of data behind you and twelve months of decisions ahead.
There’s no backlog to catch up on, no deadlines bearing down, and no halfway-through-the-year awkwardness about changing how things are working.
We work with tech founders, gaming studios, and fast-growing small businesses who want their accountant to be part of the decision-making, not just the reporting.
If that’s the kind of relationship you’re looking for, or if you’re not quite sure what you’re currently getting, we’d love to have a conversation.
No pitch, no obligation. Just a conversation about where your business is and where your numbers should be pointing you.
