Taxmo: bookkeeping and tax for UK sole traders and freelancers

Taxmo is UK bookkeeping and tax software for sole traders, freelancers and small businesses. You put income and expenses in as you go, Taxmo keeps a running figure of what to set aside for Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT, and when a return is due the numbers are already worked out. VAT returns are submitted straight to HMRC over the Making Tax Digital API. There is a free plan and paid plans above it, and no card is needed to start.

What Taxmo is, and who it is for

Taxmo is built for people doing their own books in the UK: sole traders, freelancers, contractors, expats and small businesses. The tax authority is HMRC, the filing regime is Making Tax Digital, and everything is in sterling. You are not expected to know any accounting: the page's own promise is that you know what you owe before January rather than finding out in January.

The product is deliberately narrower than a general accounting platform. It covers the tax administration a solo business actually has to do, and hides the rest. If you are not VAT registered, you never see a VAT screen.

How it works, in three steps

The home page describes the whole product as three steps. Get your numbers in, see what you owe, then file it.

Getting numbers in can be typing them, uploading a bank statement, connecting a bank, or photographing a receipt and letting Taxmo read it. Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT are then worked out from your own entries and updated as you add them. When a VAT return is due, the nine boxes are already filled in from your records and Taxmo submits them to HMRC over Making Tax Digital.

Receipts by photo, WhatsApp and email

Receipt capture is the part the home page leads with. Photograph a receipt or invoice and the amount, VAT, date and supplier are read off it, and the expense is drafted for you to confirm. The document stays attached to the entry, so when HMRC asks what a payment was, the receipt is there.

There are two hands-off routes as well. The WhatsApp Expense Inbox lets you send a receipt photo, or type something like a lunch or a train fare in plain language, and get the finished entry back to check with no app to open and no login. Email Receipt Capture gives your account its own Taxmo forwarding address on the receipts subdomain: forward the receipt, or give the address to a supplier so it arrives directly, and a draft expense appears on your Scan Receipt page for review. You can regenerate that address if it is ever compromised.

Bank feeds and statement import

Two routes bring bank transactions in, and the home page is explicit that they behave differently. The Open Banking connection is read-only account information, authorised by you at your own bank's sign-in, so Taxmo never sees your banking credentials and the connection cannot initiate a payment. It is an on-demand import rather than a background sync: you re-authorise at your bank for each import, and each import returns a recent window rather than your whole history.

For older periods, CSV statement upload has no history limit. Taxmo auto-detects the layouts of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, RBS, Starling, Monzo and Revolut from their own column names, and falls back to a generic column mapping for any other bank.

Imported transactions do not silently reach your figures. They land in a review queue with categorisation suggestions and stay pending until you approve them, and the pre-filing checklist blocks a VAT submission while an unreviewed batch exists.

VAT and Making Tax Digital

If you are VAT registered, the nine-box VAT return builds itself from your entries. Every income and expense entry lands in the right box, boxes 3 and 5 are derived, and pre-flight checks flag missing VAT numbers, amounts that disagree with the entry's rate, draft invoices and unreviewed bank imports before you submit.

Submission goes directly to HMRC over the Making Tax Digital API. You authorise Taxmo once at HMRC's own sign-in, your open VAT obligations are read from HMRC so the return goes against the period HMRC actually opened, HMRC requires an explicit declaration before anything is sent, and HMRC's receipt is stored against the period in your filing history. Nothing is retyped into the HMRC website, and no bridging software is involved. You can also see upcoming obligations, past returns and what you owe in one place, and export the return data for your own records or your accountant.

Self Assessment through the year

Self Assessment is treated as a running position rather than a January event. Income and allowable expenses are tracked against the UK tax year, an estimate of Income Tax and National Insurance is kept up to date as you go, and filing and payment dates for your tax year are tracked on the dashboard with days remaining.

Be clear about the boundary. Taxmo prepares and reviews your Self Assessment position and walks you through filing step by step, and on the top plan an AI review checks an SA100 for errors and missed deductions. Direct Self Assessment submission from Taxmo is not available, and neither is Making Tax Digital for Income Tax quarterly submission: your records are kept in the form it will need, and the feature is marked as coming rather than available.

What else is in the product

Most of this you will not need on day one. It is there for when you do.

The Tax Savings Finder compares what you have logged against the deduction categories HMRC allows and flags the gaps: use of home, mileage, the business share of your phone, professional subscriptions. Each suggestion shows an estimated saving and the HMRC page it comes from. The Scenario Planner answers what-if questions with figures: raising your day rate, registering for VAT, buying equipment, making a pension contribution. The Taxmo AI Assistant answers UK tax questions in plain English and cites the HMRC page the answer came from, and it will tell you when something is beyond a chat window.

What it costs to try, and where Taxmo sits

There is a genuinely free plan with a quarterly entry allowance, the VAT dashboard and the calculators, and no card is required to sign up. Paid plans add higher limits, receipt capture, bank feeds, reporting and direct HMRC filing, with the top plan adding the AI assistant, Self Assessment review, email receipt capture and team access. Practices are priced separately per client. Current plan prices and limits are on the pricing section of the home page and on /docs, and are deliberately not quoted here because they change.

Against a spreadsheet, the difference is that a spreadsheet holds numbers but does not know what they mean. Taxmo categorises entries to HMRC-aligned categories, keeps a live tax and VAT position rather than one you recalculate by hand, keeps the receipt attached to the entry as evidence, and is itself the Making Tax Digital compatible software, so there is nothing to bridge into HMRC.

Against a full accounting suite, the difference is scope. Taxmo does not do payroll and does not offer a public write API, and its bank connection is on-demand rather than a background sync. What it does instead is cover the tax administration a solo business has, in one place, without the modules and terminology aimed at accountants and larger teams. The comparison at /compare sets this out feature by feature, including the rows where Taxmo is behind.

Common questions

What is Taxmo?

Taxmo is UK bookkeeping and tax software for sole traders, freelancers and small businesses, at taxmo.co.uk. You record income and expenses as you go and it keeps a running estimate of the Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT you should be setting aside. It also builds your nine-box VAT return from those records and submits it to HMRC over the Making Tax Digital API.

Does Taxmo file VAT returns directly to HMRC?

Yes. Taxmo submits VAT returns to HMRC over the Making Tax Digital API on the paid plans. You authorise Taxmo once at HMRC's own sign-in, your open VAT obligations are read from HMRC so the return is filed against the period HMRC opened, the nine boxes are calculated from your approved records, HMRC requires an explicit declaration before anything is transmitted, and HMRC's receipt is stored against the period. Nothing is retyped into the HMRC website and no bridging software is needed.

Who is Taxmo for?

It is aimed at UK sole traders, freelancers, contractors, expats and small businesses who do their own books and want the tax side handled properly without learning accounting. It is not designed around the needs of larger teams or accountants doing general ledger work. Accounting practices have a separate practice management plan at taxmo.co.uk/for-accountants.

Is there a free version of Taxmo, and what does it cost to try?

There is a free plan with a quarterly entry allowance that includes the VAT dashboard, the filing guide, the VAT and Income Tax calculators and the Flat Rate Scheme assistant, and it needs no card to sign up. Paid plans add higher limits, receipt capture, bank feeds, reporting and direct HMRC filing. Current prices and plan limits are on the pricing section of taxmo.co.uk and are not quoted here because they change.

Can Taxmo import my bank transactions instead of me typing them?

Yes, two ways. An Open Banking connection gives read-only access authorised at your own bank, but it is an on-demand import rather than a background sync: you re-authorise for each import and each import returns a recent window rather than your full history. CSV statement upload has no history limit and auto-detects the layouts of Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, RBS, Starling, Monzo and Revolut, so it is the route for older periods.

Does Taxmo handle Self Assessment and Making Tax Digital for Income Tax?

Taxmo tracks your Self Assessment position all year, estimates the Income Tax and National Insurance to set aside, and walks you through the return step by step, with an AI review of the SA100 on the top plan. It does not submit Self Assessment to HMRC for you, and Making Tax Digital for Income Tax quarterly submission is marked as coming rather than available. Check GOV.UK for the qualifying income band and start date that apply to you.

How is Taxmo different from doing my books in a spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet stores numbers but does not know what they mean, so you recalculate your tax position by hand and keep receipts somewhere else. Taxmo categorises entries into HMRC-aligned categories, keeps the Income Tax, National Insurance and VAT position live as entries land, and keeps the source receipt attached to the entry as evidence. It is also itself Making Tax Digital compatible software, so your VAT return goes to HMRC without bridging software.

Is my financial data secure in Taxmo?

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest and isolated per user, sign-in is passwordless by magic link or Google so no password is stored, and HMRC connections use OAuth so Taxmo never sees your Government Gateway credentials. Taxmo does not sell your data, and your financial records are never shared with advertisers. Accepting analytics cookies enables Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion measurement, which record that a sign-up happened and nothing about your books. Every processor is named in the privacy policy under UK GDPR data processing agreements, and Taxmo does not use your data to train AI models. You can export or delete your account and data at any time.