Compare MTD accountants in Chorley

Chorley sits between Preston and Manchester, with a railway station at Buckshaw Parkway and business parks along the M61, so plenty of people here combine a job with work of their own in the evenings and at weekends: a trade, a mobile hairdressing round, a holiday let or a house they rent out. It is our home borough too: our registered office is the Strawberry Fields Digital Hub on Euxton Lane, a few minutes from Buckshaw Village.

People with a job and a side business are the group most likely to be caught out in April 2027, because they rarely think of themselves as self-employed. Making Tax Digital does not care how many hours you put in. It adds up the money coming into the side business and any rental property, before costs, and if the total is over the threshold, the quarterly rules apply.

Your wages are left out completely. Qualifying income is self-employment income plus property income, both before expenses. Salary, pensions and dividends are not part of it, so a £60,000 salary with a £12,000 side business is a £12,000 case, not a £72,000 one.

Turnover, not profit. A side business with low margins can cross the line sooner than you expect. A van-based trade that takes £32,000 but spends £20,000 on materials and fuel still counts as £32,000.

Two sources, two sets of updates. If you have a trade and a rental, each sends its own quarterly update, although the threshold is tested on the two added together.

Construction is a bigger part of the local economy than it is across the North West: 720 of the borough’s 4,585 businesses, or 15.6%, against 13.1% regionally. Finance and insurance is also unusually strong for a borough this size, at 3.4% of businesses. Almost nine in ten local businesses (88.7%) employ fewer than 10 people.

The ONS survey puts self-employment at about 12.9% of people in work, slightly above the North West’s 11.8%, though the local estimate has a margin of plus or minus 5.6 points, so treat it as a range. Set against 45 accountancy and tax firms, that is roughly 178 self-employed people for every firm (our calculation), where the regional figure is about 110. Booking an accountant well before the spring is sensible.

Renting is less common here than in the cities: 13.9% of households rented from a private landlord at the 2021 Census, against 19.2% across the region. If you own one or two houses, the updates are usually simple once the software is set up. Our guide for landlords covers joint ownership.

Not every bit of extra income is a business that needs Making Tax Digital. HMRC has two tax-free allowances of up to £1,000 a year each: the trading allowance, for things like occasional freelance work or selling crafts, and the property allowance, for small amounts of income from land or property such as renting out a driveway. If your gross income from one of those sources is £1,000 or less in a year, you usually do not need to tell HMRC about it at all.

Above that, the income goes on your tax return as now, and it counts towards the Making Tax Digital threshold. A weekend business that starts small can grow past £1,000 within a year and past £30,000 within a few, so it is worth knowing which side of each line you are on as it grows.

Plenty of side businesses in the borough sell through online marketplaces, booking sites or holiday-let platforms. Those platforms now collect details about their sellers and report them to HMRC under the reporting rules for digital platforms. The only sellers of goods left out are those with fewer than 30 sales and €2,000 or less (roughly £1,700) in a year; sellers of services and property lets are reported whatever they earn.

That does not create a new tax, but it does mean HMRC can see the income. If you sell enough to pass the trading allowance, make sure it is on your tax return, and count it towards your Making Tax Digital threshold. Under the new rules, what you record in your software should match what the platform reports, so keep the platform’s annual statement with your records.

Chorley is not all commuter estates. Beyond the town, out towards Eccleston, Croston and the moors above Rivington, there are farms and rural businesses, and agriculture shows up clearly in the ONS figures: about 60 of the borough’s 600 VAT or PAYE-registered sole traders are in farming, around one in ten.

For a farmer, the first Making Tax Digital question is how the farm is set up. A farmer trading as a sole trader, with turnover over the threshold, comes into Making Tax Digital like anyone else; remember that the test is turnover, not profit, and farm turnover can be high even when margins are thin. A farm run as a partnership is not covered yet: partnerships will join later, on a date HMRC has not set. Any income a partner has in their own name, such as a rented cottage, is a separate question and still counts.

Side businesses that outgrow the kitchen table do not always need an office of their own. Chorley Council owns and runs the Strawberry Fields Digital Hub off Euxton Lane, which opened in 2019 and offers desk space, meeting rooms and office suites to businesses in any sector. It is also where our own registered office is.

A desk outside the house can help with more than space. It makes it easier to keep business and home separate, which is exactly what Making Tax Digital’s quarterly records reward: business receipts in one place, business money in one account, and a routine for updating the books.