A clarity tool

Do I need to register for VAT yet?

Enter your taxable sales and see where you stand against the £90,000 VAT threshold, including the date you'd need to register by and the date VAT would start from. Nothing you enter here is saved or sent anywhere.

Are you VAT registered at the moment?

£
This month plus the 11 before it, not your tax year. Sales, not profit.
£
A big contract or order coming up? This is the forward-looking test.
Last 12 months£0 of £90,000

Where you stand

Over the line, or getting close?Registering is the easy part. Getting your prices, invoices and first VAT return right is where it pays to have someone in your corner, and I'm happy to talk it through with you.

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Two things that catch people out: the threshold is about sales, not profit, so a business with healthy costs can be over it without feeling anywhere near it. And it's a rolling 12 months, checked at the end of every month, not something you look at once a year when your accounts are done.

How this is worked out

HMRC uses two tests to decide when you have to register for VAT. You need to register as soon as either one applies, so this checker looks at both.

What's included

  • The £90,000 registration threshold, in place since 1 April 2024.
  • The rolling 12-month test: if your taxable sales for the last 12 months go over £90,000, you must register within 30 days of the end of that month, and VAT starts from the first day of the second month after you went over.
  • The forward-looking test: if you expect your taxable sales in the next 30 days alone to go over £90,000, you must register by the end of that 30-day period, and VAT starts from the day you realised.
  • The £88,000 deregistration threshold: if you're already registered and expect your taxable sales for the next 12 months to be below it, you can apply to cancel your registration.

What's not included

  • Businesses based outside the UK, which usually have to register however small their UK sales are.
  • Taking over an existing business as a going concern, where the previous owner's turnover can count towards yours.
  • Special cases such as VAT groups, buying goods from the EU into Northern Ireland, and businesses that only make exempt sales.
  • Penalty calculations. If you're past your deadline, the sooner you register, the better your position, and it's worth getting advice on the rest.

If you're registered, or about to be, here's how I handle VAT returns, and this plain-English guide to the VAT quarter walks through the deadlines once you're in.

This is a general guide, not tax advice. It's built to explain the published thresholds and deadlines correctly, not to give you a ruling on your specific situation. Content on this website is general information and does not constitute financial or tax advice. Talk it through with Daneon before you rely on it.

Thresholds and dates shown are current published HMRC policy and are reviewed each quarter and after every Budget. Last checked: October 2026.

Common questions

Turnover. It's the total value of your taxable sales, before any costs come off. A business making a modest profit can still be well over £90,000 in turnover, which is exactly why this one catches people out.

Neither. It's a rolling 12 months. At the end of every month, you add up that month's taxable sales and the 11 months before it. If that total goes over £90,000, you need to register, even if your financial year looks comfortably under.

Any sales that would be standard-rated, reduced-rated or zero-rated if you were registered. Zero-rated sales still count, even though no VAT would be charged on them. Exempt sales, such as residential rent, insurance and most financial services, don't count, and nor do sales that fall outside the scope of UK VAT.

You register online with HMRC, and from your effective date you charge VAT on your sales and file VAT returns using Making Tax Digital software. If you register late, HMRC still dates your registration from when it should have started, so you'll owe VAT on sales made since then, whether or not you charged it, and there may be a penalty on top. If you've only gone over because of a one-off, and you expect your next 12 months to stay under £88,000, you can ask HMRC for an exception instead.

Sometimes, yes. If most of your customers are VAT-registered businesses, they can usually reclaim the VAT you charge them, and you can reclaim the VAT on your own costs. If you mostly sell to the public, registering early usually means either putting your prices up or absorbing the VAT yourself. It's a genuine case-by-case decision, and one worth talking through before you make it.