Tax payments for seasonal businesses: how to move the dates

Your tax deadlines are set by your accounting dates, not by your trading season, so a company that earns its money in two months of the year can be profitable and still have nothing in the account on the day HMRC wants paying. The deadlines can be moved, though. You can pay VAT in nine monthly instalments instead of four quarterly lumps, ask HMRC to change which months your VAT quarters end in, and pick a year end that puts corporation tax in a month when the money is in. All three take effect from a future period, which is why the bill already in your diary needs a different answer from the ones after it.

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When each tax actually falls due

Revenue ebbs and flows in a seasonal business, and almost nothing else does. Rent, insurance, and the people you keep on through the quiet months carry on at the same rate, and so do the tax dates. Those you cannot plan around by trading harder, because none of them is set by anything happening in your business.

Three deadlines matter. Corporation tax is due nine months and one day after the end of your accounting period, if your taxable profits are up to £1.5 million; above that it is paid in instalments. VAT is due one calendar month and seven days after the end of each quarter, and the money has to have reached HMRC by that date rather than left you on it. PAYE is due by the 22nd of the next tax month, or the 19th if you pay by post. Pay any of them late and HMRC charges daily interest at 7.75% a year.

Read those three dates against your own calendar and the problem usually turns out to be one date rather than all of them. It bites hardest where the season is short and the bill is annual, because corporation tax asks one payment to carry a whole year's profit, and nine months and one day after your year end is a date nobody chose with your trading pattern in mind.

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Paying VAT in nine instalments instead of four lumps

The VAT Annual Accounting Scheme replaces four quarterly returns with one a year, and four quarterly payments with nine monthly ones. You can join if your estimated VAT taxable turnover is £1.35 million or less, and you have to leave if it is heading above £1.6 million by the end of the annual accounting year.

The schedule is the part that matters to a seasonal business, and HMRC publishes it without drawing the conclusion. Your first three months carry no payment at all. From the end of the fourth month to the end of the twelfth you pay 10% of your estimated bill each month, or you can take the quarterly version at 25% at the end of the fourth, seventh, and tenth months. Your one return is due two months after the period end, with a balancing payment in the same window, which either settles the difference or triggers a refund.

Two things follow that nobody else seems to say out loud. The instalments are flat, so the quarter in which you earn almost nothing costs the same in VAT as the quarter in which you earn almost everything, and that is the whole point: the bill stops arriving in lumps that bear no relation to your bank balance. And because the first three months are free of payments, where you start your annual accounting year decides where that gap lands. Start it at the beginning of your off-season and you get three payment-free months at the point you need them most.

It is not right for everyone, and the deciding factor is simple. You get one VAT refund a year instead of four. If you spend heavily in the off-season on stock, repairs, or equipment, and you routinely reclaim more VAT than you charge in those months, annual accounting locks that money up until your return goes in. HMRC says plainly that the scheme would not suit a business that regularly reclaims VAT, and for a seasonal business that is a real risk rather than a footnote. You also cannot join if you left the scheme in the last 12 months, if you are part of a VAT group or division, if you are behind on returns or payments, or if you are insolvent, and once you leave you wait 12 months to rejoin.

One distinction is worth drawing before you choose, because the two schemes get confused. If your problem is that customers pay you a month or two after you invoice them, that is a lag rather than a season, and the fix is the VAT Cash Accounting Scheme, which charges you VAT once your customers have paid. If your problem is that there are months when there is barely any trade to invoice, that is a season, and annual accounting is the one built for it. A business with both may want to talk its accountant through which does more.

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Moving your VAT quarters to months that suit you

Your VAT quarter dates were not chosen by you. HMRC puts every business into one of three stagger groups on registration, and you can look up yours in your VAT online account. The group decides which months your quarters end in, and therefore which months the payments land in.

You can ask to be moved. The request goes through your VAT online account, and HMRC has to approve it, so it is worth having a reason to give. It is also not quick: ICAEW reported in March 2026 that approvals were taking as long as six weeks.

Whether it is worth doing depends on how lopsided your year is. Moving one group along shifts every payment date by a month, which is enough to lift a payment out of your worst month and rarely enough to do more than that. Compared with annual accounting it is a small adjustment, and for a business whose quiet period runs for half the year it will not be the answer on its own. Where it does earn its keep is at the edges, when a single payment date sits just before the money comes in rather than just after. If you move, check how long your payment method takes to reach HMRC as well, because the deadline is the day the money arrives.

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Choosing a year end that puts corporation tax in a month you have money

Corporation tax is usually the bill that hurts, because it is annual, it is the largest, and it falls on a date derived from your accounting period rather than your trading. The date is also the most movable of the three, if you are prepared to plan a year ahead.

The arithmetic is the useful part, and it runs backwards from the month you want to pay in. Because the payment is due nine months and one day after your period end, you count back nine months from that month. If your season finishes in August and September is when the cash is reliably in the bank, the period end you want is 30 November, which puts the payment on 1 September. A June or July year end, which looks sensible because it falls just after a summer peak, actually puts the payment in April or May, which for the same business is the leanest part of the year.

Companies House sets the rules on changing it, and they are more generous than most directors expect in one direction and strict in the other. You can change the year end for your current financial year or the one immediately before it. You can shorten it as often as you like, by a minimum of one day, which is how most of these changes are made. You can only lengthen it once every five years, and never beyond 18 months. You cannot change it at all while your accounts are overdue, and once you have changed it you have to tell HMRC separately, because the Companies House change does not update your corporation tax accounting period on its own.

Two consequences are easy to miss. Shortening your year means two accounting periods in the transition, so two returns and two payments, which can bunch up before it smooths out. And changing the year end changes your accounts filing deadline at Companies House too, which is a separate date from the tax one. This is the route to take your accountant through before you file anything.

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PAYE when you only employ people for part of the year

Seasonal employers have two PAYE problems that year-round employers never meet, and neither is about the amount.

The first is the reporting. In any tax month when you pay nobody, you still have to tell HMRC, by sending an Employer Payment Summary. If you do not, HMRC does not assume you had a quiet month; it works out what it thinks you owe and chases you for it. For a business with a six-month off-season that is six filings a year with nothing in them, and forgetting them is the most common way a seasonal employer ends up with a bill it does not recognise.

The second is more useful. If you usually pay less than £1,500 a month in PAYE and National Insurance, you may be able to pay quarterly instead of monthly, which turns 12 payment dates into four and lets them fall after the quarter rather than during it. HMRC's payment helpline confirms whether you qualify.

Three things to check before your next quiet period starts:

• send an Employer Payment Summary for every tax month in which you pay nobody
• ask HMRC's payment helpline whether your average monthly bill qualifies you for quarterly payment
• if you are a new employer, keep the scheme alive, because HMRC closes a new employer's PAYE scheme if it gets no report and no payment for 120 days

Everything else about the dates, the reference, and what missing the 22nd costs is in our guide to paying PAYE and National Insurance.

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What to do about the bill already in the diary

None of the four routes above helps the payment you are looking at now. Annual accounting applies from your next VAT year, a stagger change needs HMRC's approval and can take six weeks, and you cannot touch a year end while accounts are overdue. They are answers to next year's version of the problem, which is the right problem to solve, but not the urgent one.

For the bill in front of you, the cheapest answer is not us, and it is worth saying so plainly. HMRC's Time to Pay arrangement spreads what you owe into monthly instalments with interest running at 7.75% a year, which is considerably less than borrowing the money would cost. HMRC agrees one if it believes you can keep to it, so it will ask what the company earns and spends and what you can realistically pay each month. If the bill is already overdue, financing tax arrears covers Time to Pay in full and what HMRC does next, and what paying late costs sets out the penalties and interest.

Borrowing answers a narrower question, and the difference is worth being honest about. Time to Pay is for a bill you cannot pay. Borrowing is for a bill you can pay, but not on that date, where the money is genuinely coming: the season starts in three weeks, the bookings are taken, the orders are placed. That is a timing problem rather than a shortfall, and it is the one case where paying HMRC on the day and settling up afterwards costs you less than the alternatives, because you keep the deadline, the penalties, and the interest off the table entirely.

If a VAT or corporation tax bill is due before your cash comes in, an iwoca Flexi-Loan lets you pay it on time and repay early for free once your sales catch up, so a good season clears it rather than servicing it. Two things make that work for a business with a season. Early repayment carries no fee and reduces the interest, so the money can be held for weeks rather than months. And overpaying automatically earns you a payment holiday, which is the breathing room to use when the quiet months arrive. We lend to UK limited companies, and every new Flexi-Loan needs a personal guarantee from at least one director.

Flexi-Loan in action: Dovetail & Slate

A seasonal dip put pressure on cash flow at Guy Walker's recruitment business, and he needed funding to cover VAT, salaries, and supplier bills until revenue picked up. He bridged the gap without committing to funding for longer than he needed, repaying as cash flow recovered. Read Guy's story.

Whichever route you take, the scheme choices above are worth an hour with your accountant before your next period starts, because all of them are decided by a date and none of them can be applied retrospectively.

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Seasonal tax FAQs

Can I pay corporation tax in instalments if my income is seasonal?

Not as a matter of course. Instalments are compulsory above £1.5 million of taxable profits and not otherwise available, so for most companies the options are a Time to Pay arrangement, which spreads a bill you cannot pay, or moving your year end so the single payment falls in a month when you can.

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Will the Annual Accounting Scheme save me money?

No, and it is not meant to. You pay the same VAT in the same year; the scheme changes when, splitting it across nine monthly payments and one return instead of four quarterly ones. The one way it can cost you is the single annual refund, which matters if you reclaim more VAT than you charge in your quiet months.

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How far ahead do I need to decide?

Before the period starts, in every case. Annual accounting runs from your next VAT year, a stagger change waits on HMRC's approval, a year-end change has to be made in your current financial year or the one before it, and quarterly PAYE needs agreeing with HMRC first.

Everything above is general information about how the rules work rather than tax advice, and your own circumstances may change the answer.