Self Employed Beautician Tax Guide 2026/27

This is the practical order of events for a self employed beautician, nail, lash or brow technician: tell HMRC, keep the right records, claim the right costs, and know in advance when VAT and Making Tax Digital will reach you. The figures are the ones that apply to the 2026 to 2027 tax year unless a date is given.

Registering with HMRC

If your gross income from treatments was more than £1,000 in a tax year, before expenses, you need to be registered for Self Assessment and to file a return. That applies whether this is your only work or a few evenings a week alongside a job.

The deadline to tell HMRC is 5 October following the end of the tax year in which you started. So if you began in the 2025 to 2026 tax year, which ran to 5 April 2026, you had until 5 October 2026. Register later and HMRC sets a filing deadline three months from the date of its letter, but the date the tax is due does not move. HMRC issues a Unique Taxpayer Reference, which arrives by post, so leave time for it.

Registering also starts your National Insurance position. Class 4 is charged on profits as part of the return, and Class 2 is credited automatically above the small profits threshold, which matters for your state pension record.

What to record, and the parts people miss

Income in this trade arrives in more forms than most. All of it counts.

• Card payments. Record the gross amount the client paid and claim the processing fee as a cost. Banking the net figure quietly loses you the deduction.
• Cash. Needs a daily record made at the time and a banking trail that ties to a day's takings.
• Deposits. A deposit against a future booking is your income when the treatment happens, or when it is forfeited. Money sitting in a booking system is still money.
• No show and late cancellation fees. Income, and they should be visible rather than absorbed.
• Retail sales. Products sold to clients are sales, and the unsold stock behind them is stock rather than an expense.
• Tips. Taxable, whether they arrive in cash or through the card machine.

Three kinds of cost, treated three ways

This is where a beauty business differs from a straightforward service trade.

Alongside those, the costs specific to this trade are worth claiming carefully: sterilisation supplies and clinical waste collection, laundry, single use items, patch test supplies, your professional body membership and the insurance you carry to do the work at all. Branded uniform is deductible; ordinary clothes are not.

Where you work

A rented room or chair. The simplest position. The rent is deductible in full and belongs in your records as its own line.

From home. You can claim the business share of the running costs of the house, apportioned by the rooms used and the time they are used for the business, covering heat, light, water, broadband and rent or mortgage interest. Or you can use HMRC's flat rate.

For a dedicated treatment room a proper apportionment usually beats the flat rate by a long way. Be careful about describing a room as exclusively business use, because exclusivity can create a Capital Gains Tax question when you sell the house. The flat rate does not cover telephone or internet, which are claimed separately on the business proportion.

Mobile. Travel between clients is genuine business travel, which puts mobile therapists in a better position than most trades. Travel from home to the same salon every day is commuting and is not claimable. For a vehicle you choose either the flat rate per mile or a business share of the real running costs with capital allowances, not both, and the choice sticks for as long as that vehicle is in the business. From 2026 to 2027 the flat rate is 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a car or goods vehicle and 25p after that.

VAT

You must register once your taxable turnover passes £90,000 in any rolling twelve month period, or if you expect to pass it in the next thirty days alone. The twelve months is rolling, not your accounts year. Beauty and aesthetic treatments are normally standard rated.

There is a narrow exemption for medical care provided by a registered health professional acting within their registration, which can reach some treatments delivered in a clinical setting. It is fact specific and it is not a general exemption for aesthetics, so it is worth advice on your own facts rather than an assumption either way.

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax

This one surprises people because it is measured on gross takings rather than profit. Qualifying income is gross self employment turnover plus any gross property income, before expenses.

A therapist working full weeks can be over £20,000 of takings with a much smaller profit, so a good number of beauticians will be in at the April 2028 stage. Once you are in, records have to be kept digitally in compatible software and a summary goes to HMRC on 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May, with a final declaration after the year end that replaces the return. The tax and the payment dates do not change.

The dates and the money

For the 2025 to 2026 tax year the online return and the tax were both due by 31 January 2027. If your tax for a year is £1,000 or more and less than 80% of it was collected at source, payments on account start, which means paying half of last year's tax on 31 January and again on 31 July. In a first profitable year that makes the January demand larger than the tax on the year you have just reported, so it is worth knowing before it arrives.

The practical habit that makes all of this manageable is setting money aside as you go, rather than finding the bill in January. Work out your rough tax rate once with your accountant and move that percentage of every week's takings into a separate account.