Do you need to register for VAT? Enter your monthly turnover and this tracker works out your rolling 12-month total against the £90,000 threshold, how much headroom you have, and if you are over, the month it happened, your deadline to tell HMRC and the date your registration starts.
Enter your VAT-taxable turnover for each of the last 12 months: sales that would be standard, reduced or zero-rated if you were registered, not exempt income. Leave the current month as it stands so far.
Looking back. At the end of every month, add up your VAT-taxable turnover for the last 12 months. If it is over £90,000 (the threshold since 1 April 2024) you must register: tell HMRC within 30 days of the end of the month you went over, and your registration starts on the first day of the second month after that. Go over in June, notify by 30 July, registered from 1 August.
Looking forward. If you expect your taxable turnover in the next 30 days alone to exceed £90,000, you must register by the end of those 30 days, and your registration starts on the day you realised, not the end of the period.
Everything you sell that would carry VAT if you were registered: standard-rated, reduced-rated and zero-rated sales, goods you hire or lend out, business goods used personally, and certain services received from abroad under the reverse charge. It does not include exempt income such as insurance, most financial services and some property lettings, or the sale of capital assets. It is a rolling 12-month figure, not a tax year or calendar year.
If you go over the threshold because of a one-off spike and can show HMRC that your turnover in the following 12 months will stay under the £88,000 deregistration threshold, you can apply for an exception from registration. Once registered, you can ask to deregister if you expect taxable turnover to stay below £88,000 over the next 12 months.
Registering late means you owe the VAT from the date you should have registered, whether or not you charged it, plus a penalty based on how late you were. The tracker above tells you the month, the deadline and the effective date so you are never guessing.
You can register below the threshold. It makes sense if your customers are VAT-registered businesses (they reclaim what you charge, and you reclaim VAT on your costs) or if you buy a lot of standard-rated goods. If you sell mainly to the public, a 20% price rise or a 16.7% margin cut is the real cost, so most businesses wait until they must.
£90,000 of VAT-taxable turnover in any rolling 12-month period, unchanged since 1 April 2024. The deregistration threshold is £88,000.
No. It is the last 12 months at the end of any month, so it moves every month. The tracker shows the running total month by month.
Within 30 days of the end of the month in which your rolling 12-month turnover exceeded £90,000. Your registration takes effect from the first day of the second month after you went over.
Yes. Zero-rated sales are taxable at 0% and count. Exempt sales do not.
You can ask HMRC for an exception if you can show turnover will fall back below £88,000 in the next 12 months. Apply in writing with your evidence; do not just skip registering.