Cashowa
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Not in this tax year — in any rolling twelve months. It is a window that moves every month, which is why a running total in a spreadsheet gets it wrong in both directions. Put in your monthly turnover and see the month you cross.
Your rolling 12 months
£79,300
to August 2026 · threshold is £90,000
Headroom today
£10,700
At this rate you cross in February 2027 — 6 months away.
You would then need to register by 30 March 2027 and charge VAT from 1 April 2027.
Each point is that month plus the eleven before it — the figure HMRC actually tests. The dashed part is the projection at £7,767 a month.
Not £10,700, which is what your headroom looks like today. Next month the £5,200 you billed in Sep 2025 drops out of the window, so it stops counting against you.
This is the part a running total in a spreadsheet gets wrong — it only ever adds.
Taxable turnover, not profit, and not just the VAT-able part — zero-rated sales count too. Leave out anything exempt or outside the scope of VAT.
Almost everyone who gets this wrong gets it wrong the same way: they check their turnover against the tax year. HMRC does not. The test is any rolling 12 months — count back twelve months from today, and from tomorrow, and from every day after that. A business six months into its accounting year can be half its annual budget and already past the line, because the twelve months being tested reach back into the year before.
The second thing that follows from “rolling” is stranger, and it is the reason this page draws a line rather than printing a number. The window moves forward one month at a time, so each month a month leaves it. Your rolling total can fall in a month you were paid well, if the month dropping out was better still. It can also rise in a month you barely worked. Neither is intuitive, and neither shows up in a spreadsheet that only ever adds.
Register if your taxable turnover for the last 12 months goes over £90,000. You have 30 days from the end of the month in which you crossed — so crossing on 15 July gives you until 30 August, not 14 August. Your registration takes effect on the first day of the second month after you crossed: 1 September, in that example.
There is a second test, and it can catch a business on its first day of trading. If you realise that your taxable turnover in the next 30 days alone will go over £90,000, you must register by the end of that 30-day period, and your effective date is the day you realised — not the day the money arrives. One large contract triggers it with no trading history whatsoever. Nothing on this page can predict that, which is why it says so rather than implying the backward look is the whole rule.
It is the total value of everything you sell that is not exempt. Costs do not come off it. Zero-rated sales count in full, which is the trap for anyone selling children's clothes, books or most food — they are taxable at 0%, not exempt, so a business can sail past £90,000 having never charged VAT on anything. What genuinely does not count is exempt supplies and anything outside the scope of VAT.
Your effective date is set by when you crossed, not by when you noticed. Every sale from that date onwards owed VAT, whether or not your invoices showed any. If you register three months late, you owe HMRC a fifth of three months of sales out of money customers have already paid you — and asking them for it afterwards rarely goes well. This is the reason to watch the rolling figure rather than check it once a year.
A single unusual month does not have to mean registration. You can apply for an exception, showing HMRC that the next 12 months will come in under the £88,000 deregistration threshold. It is their decision, and the time to ask is before the registration deadline rather than after it.
Where this leaves you. A calculator works on figures you type in, and the figures are the hard part — twelve months of turnover, with the exempt and out-of-scope sales taken out, is not something most people have to hand. It is sitting in your bank statements. Cashowa reads them and keeps the rolling figure for you, so the answer to “how close am I?” is already worked out rather than an evening with a spreadsheet.
Upload your bank statements and Cashowa keeps your rolling 12-month turnover up to date, so you see the threshold coming instead of discovering it. Free to start.