How to de-register as self employed

All good things must come to an end, and that sometimes means ending your career as a small business owner, even if just for a little while. Whatever your reasons for ending your self-employment, you’ll need to inform HMRC to make it official. Here’s everything you need to know. 

Contacting HMRC

First things first, you must tell HMRC if you’ve stopped trading as a sole trader, or you’re ending or leaving a business partnership. It’s simple to do this online - just make sure you have your National Insurance and Unique Tax Reference (UTR) numbers to hand.

Filing a final Self Assessment tax return

Once you’ve de-registered, you still need to send a final Self Assessment tax return before the deadline. 

As with any other time you’ve filed your Self Assessment, you’ll need to:

• work out your trading income
• add up your allowable expenses - this may include some of the costs involved with closing down your business, for example phone, internet and postage costs of letting people know
• calculate your capital allowances, including any balancing charges if you’ve sold business equipment or machinery
• work out if you owe Capital Gains Tax on any assets you’ve sold or disposed of
• calculate your final profit or loss

If your business partnership is ending, the nominated partner should also send a final Partnership Tax Return by the deadline on 31st January. 

Claiming tax relief

In some cases, you might be able to reduce your final tax bill. You could claim:

• Entrepreneurs’ Relief - this can reduce the amount of Capital Gains Tax you have to pay
• overlap relief - this can prevent you being taxed twice on your profits when you stop trading during a tax year
• terminal loss relief - this can offset a loss made in your last tax year against your profit in the three previous tax years 

It can be a little tricky to navigate complex accounting areas like these, so make sure to speak to an accountant to find out more.

De-registering for VAT

If you or your partnership are registered for VAT, you must also cancel your VAT registration. As with de-registering for self-employment, it’s straightforward to de-register for VAT online. 

It usually takes about three weeks for HMRC to confirm your cancellation and provide the official cancellation date of your VAT registration. This will be the date when the reason for your cancellation took effect (i.e. the date when you stopped trading).

Tidying up any loose ends

Ending your self-employment can be a difficult time, and there can be lots of tricky tasks to undertake, from cancelling a co-working space subscription to binning your old business cards. Here are a few of the legal obligations that you might also need to meet during this time.

If you employ people

You need to close your PAYE scheme and send final payroll reports to HMRC. You can find out more about this on HMRC’s website.

If you’re insolvent

Even if you stop being self-employed, you’ll usually be personally liable for your business debts. If you have outstanding debts, your creditors can take you to court or even make you bankrupt in some circumstances if you don’t pay. If you’re in this unfortunate situation, you might be able to find an alternative, such as an Individual Voluntary Arrangement.

If you’re registered with the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS)

Are you registered as a CIS contractor or subcontractor? You must call the CIS helpline if you will no longer be in self-employment.