How to submit a VAT return

If your company is registered for VAT, you have to send HMRC a return – usually every three months, and even in a quarter when you have nothing to declare. You file it through Making Tax Digital software, and both the return and the payment are due one calendar month and seven days after your VAT period ends. Most of the work is checking rather than calculating: your software fills in the nine figures from your records, and you are the one signing them off.

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When your VAT return is due

If your VAT period ends on 31 March, HMRC needs the return and the payment by 7 May: one calendar month and seven days. You usually file every three months, and a return is due even in a quarter with nothing to pay or reclaim.

Monthly and annual filing exist too. Your VAT online account shows which applies to your own company, the dates that go with it, when the payment has to clear, and whether HMRC has received the return.

Three things about that deadline catch people out. It holds on a weekend and on a bank holiday, and the money has to reach HMRC on or before it, so a transfer you start on the day itself can be too late. You can file as soon as the period has ended, which costs nothing and leaves the payment room to clear. And filing and paying are two separate obligations with two separate penalties, so if you can do one but not the other, file anyway.

The return only tells HMRC what you owe. Getting the money there, and knowing which methods clear in time, is a separate job: our guide to paying a VAT bill covers it.

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Can you do your own VAT return?

Yes. Nothing in the rules says you need an accountant, and plenty of directors file their own. It stays a straightforward job while your sales are standard-rated UK sales and your bookkeeping already sits in software that talks to HMRC.

What makes it harder is the kind of transactions in the business rather than the size of it. Four situations are worth paying someone to look at before you submit:

• you import goods, or account for import VAT through postponed VAT accounting
• you buy services from suppliers outside the UK, which brings in the reverse charge
• you make exempt sales as well as taxable ones, so partial exemption decides how much you can reclaim
• you are on the Flat Rate Scheme, a margin scheme, or cash accounting, each of which changes what the figures mean

Even then it is usually a review rather than a handover: your accountant checks the treatment, and you still submit. Whoever prepares the return, you are the one declaring it is correct. Nothing here is tax advice, so check anything specific to your company with your accountant or with HMRC.

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Filing through Making Tax Digital software

Every VAT-registered company has to keep digital records and file through Making Tax Digital software, whatever its turnover. That has been the rule since April 2022, and there is no longer a form on GOV.UK you can type the nine figures into.

The £90,000 you may have read about is the VAT registration threshold, and it has nothing to do with Making Tax Digital. A company that chose to register for VAT below that threshold files exactly the same way as the largest VAT-registered business in the country.

Two kinds of software do the job, and HMRC keeps a searchable list of both. A record-keeping package holds your bookkeeping and files the return out of it. Bridging software connects a spreadsheet to HMRC, so figures that live in a spreadsheet can stay there. The first time you file, your software asks you to authorise it against your HMRC account, and that permission lasts 18 months. Do it a few days before the deadline rather than on the day, because this is the step that goes wrong.

Exemption is narrow. It is automatic if your company is in an insolvency procedure, or sending a final return after cancelling its registration. Otherwise you have to apply for one, and HMRC grants it only where using computers, software, or the internet is not reasonable or practical for you – your age, a health condition, where you live, a religious objection, or no internet connection. Send a paper return without an exemption and HMRC can charge up to £400.

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The VAT return process, step by step

Once the software is connected, a quarter looks like this. Steps two and three are where the time goes, and the rest takes minutes.

1. Find the period you are filing. Open your software, or your VAT online account, and look at the open obligation. It gives you the start date, the end date, and the deadline.
2. Reconcile your records to the period end. Match bank transactions to sales invoices and supplier bills, and check that nothing from the quarter is still sitting unposted.
3. Check how each sale and purchase is treated. Confirm the scheme set in your software is the one you are actually on, then look again at anything zero-rated, exempt, imported, or bought from a supplier outside the UK.
4. Read the nine boxes before you sign them off. Your software fills them in from your records, but you are the one declaring they are right.
5. Submit through your software and keep the confirmation. Save it with the quarter's paperwork. It is your proof the return arrived on time.
6. Pay what box 5 shows, by the same deadline. If box 4 comes to more than box 3, HMRC owes you instead and repays the balance, which is how you reclaim VAT on your costs.

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What goes in each of the nine boxes

This is the part your software hides. It fills the boxes in for you, so the only way to catch a figure that has gone in wrong is to know what each box is meant to hold.

The definitions come from HMRC's VAT Notice 700/12. Two of them cause most of the trouble.

The reverse charge has to appear twice. When you buy software, advertising, or professional services from a supplier outside the UK, no UK VAT is charged, so you account for it yourself: the same amount goes in box 1 and box 4, and the value goes in box 6 and box 7. It nets to nothing, which is exactly why it gets left out, and leaving it out understates your turnover.

Box 4 needs an invoice, not a receipt. A card statement, a pro forma invoice, or a delivery note will not support a reclaim if HMRC asks to see what sits behind the figure.

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A worked quarter for a small limited company

Figures are quicker to read than definitions. The quarter below belongs to an imaginary design agency in England, with UK clients and one software subscription bought from a United States supplier. The numbers are made up to show the arithmetic.

It invoiced £48,000 of design work and charged VAT at 20% on all of it, so £9,600 of VAT on sales. It bought £12,000 of goods and services in the UK with £2,400 of VAT on them. And it paid £1,000 for software from a supplier in the United States, which charged no UK VAT, so the agency accounts for £200 of reverse charge VAT itself.

The agency pays £7,200. On a quarter ending 30 September, that money has to reach HMRC by 7 November.

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What it costs if the return is late

A late return costs you a point before it costs you money. Every return you send late earns one penalty point, nil returns included, and the £200 penalty arrives when you reach your threshold: four points if you file quarterly, two if you file annually, and five if you file monthly. Once you are there, every further late return is another £200. HMRC sets out the arithmetic in its guide to penalty points for a late VAT return, and you can see your own points in your VAT online account.

Points do clear, but slowly. Below the threshold a single point drops off roughly two years after the return was due. At the threshold it takes two things at once: a clean run of returns filed on time, 12 months of them for a quarterly filer, and every outstanding return from the previous two years in. HMRC covers both in its guide to removing penalty points.

Paying late is charged separately, so a quarter where both slip costs you twice. There is no penalty at all for the first 15 days, which is the fortnight worth knowing about: a penalty of 3% of what you still owe starts at day 16, it rises again at day 31, and interest runs from the first overdue day at the Bank of England base rate plus 4%, or 7.75% from 9 January 2026. HMRC explains the stages in its guide to late payment penalties for VAT, and ours to HMRC tax penalties covers the other taxes your company pays.

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Putting right a figure you got wrong

Most mistakes you can fix yourself on your next return, by adjusting box 1 or box 4. That covers net errors of £10,000 or less. It also covers errors between £10,000 and £50,000, as long as they come to less than 1% of the sales figure in box 6.

Anything above that, and any error you made deliberately, you tell HMRC about separately, through its online error correction service or in writing. There is no VAT652 form any more; HMRC withdrew it on 8 September 2025. Deliberate errors go on their own and cannot be netted off against anything else.

To work out the net value, add up the extra tax you owe HMRC and take off the tax HMRC owes you. Either way, keep a note of what the error was, when you found it, how it happened, and how much VAT it involved, and put its value in your VAT account. You can go back four years. HMRC's VAT Notice 700/45 has the detail.

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When the VAT is due before your customers pay

The return says you owe £7,200 by the 7th and the money is not in yet. Talk to HMRC first. A Time to Pay arrangement asked for inside the first 15 days can mean no late payment penalty at all, and it is the cheapest route by a distance: our guide to a VAT payment plan explains how to ask for one.

Borrowing answers a different question. Not how to spread a bill you cannot cover, but how to pay one on time when your own money is arriving later than HMRC's deadline. If a VAT or corporation tax bill is due before your cash comes in, a Flexi-Loan lets you pay it on time and repay early for free once your sales catch up. Our research, published in April 2026, found that 28% of UK small businesses have two months or less of cash in reserve, from a survey of 1,005 owners.

A quarter's VAT is money you have already collected rather than a new cost, so the companies it catches are specific ones: the quarter that ends in your quiet months, or customers who pay on longer terms than HMRC gives you. Dovetail and Slate, a recruitment business, used a Flexi-Loan to cover VAT, salaries, and suppliers through the summer.

If the gap will not close when your customers pay, or every quarter's VAT is a shortfall rather than a timing problem, borrowing is the wrong tool: that conversation belongs with HMRC or your accountant. What paying a VAT bill involves, and what each route costs, is on its own page.

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VAT return FAQs

Can you submit a VAT return early?

You can file as soon as your VAT period has ended, and there is usually nothing to gain by waiting. Filing early leaves the payment room to clear.

The payment deadline does not move with it, though. Submit the return three weeks ahead and the money is still due on the same date it always was. Filing on the deadline day is allowed, but the payment is due that day too.

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What if HMRC sends you an assessment instead?

If you miss the filing deadline, HMRC can send a VAT notice of assessment of tax, which is its own estimate of what you owe. If the figure is too high, the fix is to send the correct return and pay what that shows.

If it is too low, tell HMRC within 30 days or send a correct return and payment. Leave it and you could be charged a penalty of up to 30% of the assessment.

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How long should you keep your VAT records?

Keep your VAT records for at least six years, and keep the submission confirmation your software gave you alongside them. HMRC can ask to see what sits behind any figure on a return.

HMRC's VAT Notice 700/21 sets out what counts as a record. Keeping them digitally is fine, and under Making Tax Digital it is the point.