UK accountants are not short of work. They are short of time, clean data and a single place to file. Limited companies, landlords and sole traders now expect digital filing, faster answers and a lower bill — while HMRC, Companies House and payroll rules keep moving.
If you run a small practice — or you are a director who still does your own books — these are the pressures showing up on every desk in 2026, and what actually helps.
Too many government portals for one client
A typical limited company still needs MTD VAT (if registered), a CT600 and iXBRL accounts, a confirmation statement, PAYE RTI if it has staff, and sometimes Self Assessment for the director. Each has its own login, deadline and error message. Accountants lose hours logging in, downloading PDFs and re-typing the same company number.
The practical fix is one client record that carries HMRC and Companies House work together — not five bookmarks and a spreadsheet of passwords.
Client records arrive late, messy or incomplete
Bank CSVs with no categories, missing invoices, directors who mix personal and company spend, and year-end “we’ll send it next week” are still the biggest time thieves. The accounting challenge is rarely the tax computation. It is reconstructing a year from fragments.
- Ask for bank exports early, not in week 50 of the accounting period.
- Agree a simple chart of categories the client can actually use.
- File VAT and payroll through the year so year-end is a check, not an excavation.
Digital tax rules keep changing — even when “MTD for CT” does not arrive
Making Tax Digital for VAT is already compulsory. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is rolling out for qualifying self-employed people and landlords. Making Tax Digital for Corporation Tax, as originally consulted on, is not being introduced. That does not mean corporation tax is “unchanged”: HMRC closed its free joint online CT600 service, so most companies now need commercial software to file.
Practices that still treated CT600 as a once-a-year government website job now have a software and process problem, not just a tax one.
Companies House identity verification
Directors and people with significant control must verify identity. Confirmation statements and incorporations now need personal codes. Accountants are being asked to explain GOV.UK One Login, ACSPs and why a filing was rejected for a missing code. That is extra client education on top of the accounts.
People, not just software
Qualified staff are expensive and hard to hire. Junior time is burned on data entry that software should have done. The firms that stay profitable are the ones that standardise: same checklist per client, same filing desk, same place to see what is overdue.
HydraTax is built as a practice desk: CT600, MTD VAT, Self Assessment, PAYE and Companies House in one UK product — so the challenge is the advice, not the login.
What to do this month
- List every client’s next VAT, CT, payroll and confirmation statement date in one view.
- Move CT600 filing off any leftover free-service habit onto recognised software.
- Collect director personal codes before the confirmation statement is due, not on the deadline day.
- Stop re-keying bank and trial balance figures into separate tools if one workspace can take them through to a return.