How much does an accountant cost in the UK?

For most people the answer sits in three bands. A one-off Self Assessment is £150–£400 + VAT at a typical firm, £35–£240 from an app or online service, and £500 or more when foreign income, property and capital gains arrive together. A monthly package for a sole trader starts at £24.50–£60 + VAT; for a limited company £39.50–£179 + VAT, with bookkeeping, VAT returns and payroll usually extra. A small company’s accounts and tax return as a one-off job are £349–£1,275 + VAT. The tables above show who charges what.

£150–£250 + VAT for a simple return with one or two income sources, £200–£350 for a sole trader with expenses, £350–£500 or more where there is property, gains or foreign income — the range The Accountancy Partnership and Unbiased both publish for 2026, and the individual prices above bear it out. Apps are cheaper, at £35–£99, because you do the data entry and nobody reads your bank statements. Ours is £99, £149 or £249 by complexity, fixed before we start, with no VAT.

Published monthly packages run from £39.50 + VAT (accounts and the company tax return only, each director’s personal return extra) to £179 + VAT for an inside-IR35 contractor tier, with £90–£135 + VAT the common middle. As a one-off job, accounts and the CT600 for a small company are £349–£1,275 + VAT from fixed-fee providers, and market guides put an active company at £900–£2,000. Check whether the confirmation statement, payroll and each director’s personal return are in the price — at the entry level they usually are not.

We are not VAT registered, so the figure we quote is the figure you pay. Most firms in the tables are registered and add 20%: £24.50 + VAT is £29.40, £135 + VAT is £162. If you cannot reclaim VAT yourself — a sole trader below the threshold or a private landlord cannot — that 20% is a real difference, not an accounting one. The switch above the tables adds it for you.

Because the work genuinely varies, and a number that turns out to be wrong is worse than no number. An HMRC compliance check can be one letter or six months; a company’s year can be forty transactions or four thousand. So we look first, free, and then give a fixed price in writing. It does not move afterwards unless the work turns out to be materially different from what you described — and then we tell you before continuing, not after.

On a £2,000 CIS refund the percentage models in the table work out at £200–£540, and the flat-fee providers file the same return for £39–£354. The percentage rises with the refund; the flat fee does not. Some flat-fee providers also deduct their fee from the refund, so paying nothing up front does not require a percentage model. Which suits you depends on the size of your refund and whether you can pay before it arrives.

Not necessarily — a £35 app is good value for a simple return. Price stops being the point when it excludes the thing you need. Check who actually prepares the return (a qualified person, or a questionnaire), whether the price rises near the deadline, whether the software is a separate subscription, whether the entry package includes bookkeeping, and what happens when HMRC writes to you afterwards. Most surprises in this market are add-ons, not headline prices.

For a business, yes: accountancy fees for the accounts and the business part of the return are an allowable expense for sole traders, landlords and companies alike. The cost of a purely personal return, with no business or property income behind it, is not deductible. We show the split on the invoice so the right part gets claimed.

At several providers, yes: Crunch says so on its pricing page and Taxd adds a last-minute surcharge, because January is when everyone arrives at once. Ours does not change with the date — but our capacity does, and a return filed in the autumn gets more attention than one filed on 30 January.