Year-End Tax Planning Checklist: What Should UK Business Owners Do Before 5 April 2027?

The most useful year-end tax planning happens at least six months before the tax year ends, because that is when there is still time to act on it. For 2026/27, the big levers are your £60,000 pension annual allowance, the £20,000 ISA allowance, the £500 dividend allowance and the £3,000 capital gains exempt amount, and every one of them disappears at midnight on 5 April 2027 if unused. Work through the checklist below and you will keep more of what you have earned.

Every autumn, we sit down with our clients to run through exactly this exercise. Some years it saves a few hundred pounds. Other years, a well-timed pension contribution or an equipment purchase brought forward by a month saves several thousand. The difference is almost never knowledge. It is timing.

Here is the checklist we use, written so you can work through it yourself before we talk it through together.

When should you start year-end tax planning?

Start in the autumn, around six months before the tax year ends on 5 April. That gives you time to adjust payroll, make pension contributions and plan purchases properly, rather than scrambling in March when options have already narrowed.

Most tax reliefs and allowances are use-it-or-lose-it within a single tax year. If you only look at your position after 5 April, you are doing the accounts, not the planning. Leaving it until January still helps, but some moves, like spreading income or timing a dividend, need months of runway to work properly.

Which personal allowances should you use before 5 April 2027?

The main ones are your pension annual allowance of £60,000, the £20,000 ISA allowance, the £500 dividend allowance and the £3,000 capital gains exempt amount. None of these carry forward in full, so anything unused on 5 April is simply gone.

• Pension contributions (up to £60,000). Contributions attract tax relief at your highest rate, and carry forward is available for up to three previous years if you were a pension scheme member. High earners should check the tapered allowance, which starts to bite once adjusted income passes £260,000.
• Dividend allowance (£500). The first £500 of dividend income is tax-free each year. If you run a limited company, timing dividends around the year end can use two years of allowance within weeks of each other.
• ISA allowance (£20,000). Growth and income inside an ISA are tax-free. It does not reduce this year’s tax bill, but it shelters long-term savings from future ones.
• Capital gains exempt amount (£3,000). If you are planning to sell shares or other assets, crystallising gains across two tax years can halve the tax due.
• Personal allowance (£12,570). Make sure household income is structured so nobody wastes theirs, particularly where one partner earns below the threshold and the other is a higher-rate taxpayer.

The right mix depends on your income, your family and what you are building towards. The numbers above are the current gov.uk figures for 2026/27, but always check they still apply before you act.

What should limited company directors review before their company year end?

Your company has its own year end, and it rarely matches 5 April. Before it arrives, review your salary and dividend mix, employer pension contributions, planned equipment purchases, your director’s loan account and your corporation tax provision. Each one is far easier to fix before the year end than after.

A few specifics worth checking:

• Salary versus dividends. The most tax-efficient blend changes as your profits grow and as tax rates shift. We covered this in detail in our guide on how to pay yourself as a limited company director.
• Employer pension contributions. Paid by the company, these are usually a deductible expense and avoid National Insurance entirely. For many directors this is the single most efficient way to extract profit.
• Capital allowances. The Annual Investment Allowance covers up to £1 million of qualifying plant and machinery, so bringing a planned purchase forward by a few weeks can bring the relief into the current year.
• Director’s loan account. If you owe the company money at the year end, you could face a Section 455 charge and benefit-in-kind tax. Clearing or restructuring the balance beforehand is usually cheaper.
• Corporation tax provision. Knowing your likely liability now means no nasty surprises when the payment falls due nine months after the year end.

How do we approach year-end tax planning with our clients?

We start the conversation in the autumn, pull up the latest figures from your bookkeeping, estimate your tax position for the year, and give you a short written action list with deadlines. The whole point is that nothing on that list should surprise you in January.

In practice, that means a review meeting or call, a clear picture of where your profit is heading, and specific, agreed actions: a pension top-up here, a dividend timed there, a purchase decision made with the tax position in mind. Clients across Rossendale and the wider North West, and further afield, tell us the same thing afterwards. The value is not a clever trick. It is the confidence of knowing the year ends on your terms.

This sits squarely within our advisory and planning work, and it is one of the clearest examples of why proactive advice beats compliance-only accounting.

What should you do next?

Pick two or three items from this checklist and diarise them this month. If you want us to run the numbers with you, get in touch for a chat and we will map out your position before the year end. A little planning now is worth a great deal of firefighting later.