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Incoming: more red tape for the self-employed and micro businesses

ended 24. June 2026

Self Assessment taxpayers with PAYE income, such as from employment or a pension, will need to pay towards their Self Assessment tax bill through their PAYE income, where they have enough income to do so, from April 2029, the Government has announced today. 

The aim, we're told, is to smooth out tax payment and help taxpayers avoid unexpected or large tax bills. Some Newspagers have already said it will mean. more red tape and uncertainty for SMEs.

Read the full report here if you're self-employed, which most of you are, and send us your thoughts by 08:00 tomorrow AM. Video responses, too, welcomed and will be pinned. The announcement follows hot on the heels of official Govt data on the tax gap, which there is also a live alert on if you'd rather watch paint dry than the footy.

6 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Matthew Knight
Chief Freelance Officer at Freelancing.Support
This move feels like it risks adding more complexity, rather than simplifying how freelancers pay tax. With 43% of the self-employed already making mistakes in their self-assessment, leading to a significant portion of the UK's tax gap, we need to make things easier to understand and pay tax, and better education and accessible tax advice for small businesses.
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Michelle Lawson
Director at Lawson Financial
After HMRC declaring the gap in tax receipts and the pressures from small businesses, this is yet something else to add further pressure not help it. Tax should not be used for cash flow but this is nothing more than ensuring a more regular tax receipt in the coffers to help balance the books. There will be further costs imposed by more regular accountancy and using software making UK plc a country with so much red tape they are tying themselves in knots with it. Loosening it off and reversing some of the most ridiculous policy would increase the tax coffers and ease the pain for those affected.
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Evren Ergin
Founder And Developer at ValuQ
As someone running a business, this is the wrong direction. Smoothing tax payments is a fine aim. The reality for a micro business is one more system to learn, reconcile and get wrong.

Admin is regressive. A national chain has a finance team to absorb it. A self-employed plumber, a one-branch estate agent, a sole-trader bookkeeper absorbs it personally, at night, after the actual work. Every layer of red tape quietly tilts the field toward the big and away from the small.

If the goal is fewer nasty surprises at tax time, the answer is simpler rules and better tools, not more obligations bolted onto people already doing three jobs at once.
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Steven Mather
Lawyer & Director at Steven Mather Solicitor
Smoothing tax payments sounds taxpayer-friendly until you remember whose cashflow is being smoothed. Small businesses are being asked to hand their money to HMRC sooner, based on a forecast. If HMRC’s forecasts are wrong, small businesses will be the ones chasing refunds or scrambling to top up, and that’s more admin, not less. The promise of ‘support and guidance’ needs to be real, because owner-managers don’t have a finance department to absorb the friction - and getting a response from HMRC right now feels close to impossible.
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Helen Llewellyn
Founder at Elemental Tribe
Great idea for a sinking ship of a government. How would payroll and tax codes cope with the potential fluctuations or seasonality of self employment? They won’t. It will be another fine mess they got themselves into.
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Steph Briggs
Retail Expert, Freelance Marketing Consultant at Steph Briggs Marketing
The intention of smoothing tax payments is understandable, but this feels like making the system even more complicated than it needs to be. For many taxpayers and SME owners, the challenge isn’t when tax is collected, it’s understanding an increasingly complex tax system. The focus should be on simplification and transparency rather than adding another layer of complexity.