VAT threshold
When do you cross the VAT threshold?
The £90,000 test isn't about the tax year — it's any rolling 12 months, checked at the end of every month. Put in your last 12 months and a typical month, and see whether you're on course to cross, and roughly when.
Your turnover
Everything invoiced in the last 12 months, not the tax year.
What a recent month's invoicing adds up to.
Registration threshold £90,000, checked against GOV.UK on 20 August 2026.
The rolling window is the trap
Most people picture the threshold as a tax-year total that resets in April. It doesn't reset. At the end of every month you look back exactly 12 months, and if that total is over £90,000, the clock has already started. A busy autumn on top of a decent spring can carry you over in a month where you barely worked — the window remembers the whole year even when the diary doesn't.
A worked example
Say the last 12 months add up to £76,000 and a typical month lately is £8,000. Each new month adds £8,000 and drops an average old month of about £6,333, so the rolling total climbs roughly £1,667 a month. The £14,000 of headroom runs out in about nine months — not the two or three that £8,000 a month against £14,000 might suggest, and not never, which is what "I'm only at £76,000" feels like.
What happens when you cross
You must register within 30 days of the end of the month you went over, and VAT applies from the first day of the month after that. Crossing isn't a disaster — it's a pricing decision you want to make ahead of time rather than discover in arrears. If you're close, the flat rate comparison is the next question worth an answer.
grafter.ly keeps every invoice in one place, so the 12-month number stops being a guess. Once you're over, the VAT page shows what you've charged and what you've paid out, by quarter. How the VAT quarter works.
Know where the year is heading.
Set it up yourself in minutes. No sales call, no card, no drip emails.
30 days free, then £25 a month. No card details to start.