Market traders and shop owners: compare MTD accountants in Bolton

Bolton Market sits on Ashburner Street in the town centre, and the council lists it as open four days a week. It was named Best Market Attraction at the Great British Market Awards in 2019, and a food hall opened there in 2024. Around it, retail, wholesale and the motor trade account for 2,400 of the borough’s 10,880 businesses, or 22.0%, against 16.9% across the North West.

That makes Making Tax Digital a question about takings for a lot of people here. If you already keep a cash book or a till summary, the same information goes into software under the new rules, and HMRC sees a quarterly total rather than one figure a year.

Of the 1,080 sole traders registered for VAT or PAYE, 215 are in retail, wholesale or the motor trade and 175 in transport. The ONS survey puts self-employment at about 9.4% of people in work (plus or minus 3.2 points), a little below the North West’s 11.8%.

The borough is well served for accountants: 175 accountancy, bookkeeping and tax firms, about 69 self-employed people for each one by our calculation, where the regional figure is about 110. That leaves room to compare fees and find someone who already looks after market traders. 18.0% of households rented privately at the 2021 Census, close to the regional 19.2%, so landlord clients are common too; see our guide for landlords.

The food hall that opened at Bolton Market in 2024 brought a new group of traders into the town centre, many running their first business. If you are starting a food stall, a few registrations come before the first sale. You register with HMRC as self-employed for Self Assessment, and you register as a food business with the council at least 28 days before you start providing food.

Making Tax Digital is worth thinking about from day one, even though a brand-new trader will not usually be in it straight away: the start date depends on the turnover on a tax return already filed. Setting up recognised software in your first week, and recording takings and costs daily from the start, means that when your turnover does cross the line, nothing about your routine has to change.

Here is how a single week might look in the records of a stallholder trading the four market days. The figures are an illustration, not a real trader. Over the week the stall takes £260 in cash and £390 on the card reader. The card provider takes £7 in fees, and the trader buys £310 of stock from a wholesaler.

In the software that becomes four daily takings figures adding up to £650 of income, a £7 card fees expense and a £310 stock expense. The amount that actually reached the bank from the card reader is lower than the card sales, but the sales figure is what goes in as income. Do that each week and the quarterly update is already done.

Cash basis is now the standard way for sole traders to keep their books: you record income when you are paid and expenses when you pay them. For a market trader that is simple, but it has a side effect worth knowing about. Stock bought in bulk before Christmas lands as a cost in one quarter, and the sales come through in the next, so individual quarterly updates can swing a long way from your real profit.

That does not matter for tax, because the year adds up in the end, but it can be alarming if you watch the quarterly figures closely. Businesses holding a lot of stock can choose traditional accounting instead, which matches the cost of stock to the sales it produces. If your stock levels are high or seasonal, ask an accountant which method suits you before your first update.

A busy shop or stall can grow towards the VAT registration threshold, which is £90,000 of taxable turnover over any rolling 12 months. You must register within 30 days of the end of the month in which you first go over it. Once registered, you also keep VAT records digitally and file VAT returns through compatible software under Making Tax Digital for VAT, alongside your income tax updates.

Your Making Tax Digital software helps here, because it shows a running total of your takings. Check the last 12 months at the end of every month as you approach £90,000, not just at the end of the tax year. The rolling test is easy to miss if you only look at the April-to-April figures.

Many traders also sell away from their usual pitch: at events such as the town’s food and drink festival, at fairs, or online. All of that is income from the same trade and goes into the same records, with any pitch fees, travel and stand costs as expenses. Record event takings the same way as market days, as a daily total.

Online sales through a marketplace add one more thing to watch. Marketplaces now report their sellers to HMRC, except very small sellers of goods with fewer than 30 sales and €2,000 or less in a year. The figure HMRC receives is what customers paid, so record the full sale as income and the marketplace’s fees as an expense, rather than recording only the payout.

A trader who takes on a Saturday helper or a shop assistant becomes an employer. Their wages go through PAYE, which is a separate system from Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, with its own payroll reporting. The wages you pay are a business expense in your MTD records; the PAYE itself is handled through payroll software or by your accountant.

If you are planning to take someone on around the time you start Making Tax Digital, it is worth setting up payroll and your MTD software together, so the two systems start cleanly in the same tax year.