HMRC guidance is failing UK small firms. Plain English would fix it.

Over 20 years advising UK small businesses, I have watched one issue quietly cost my clients more time and more sleep than any single tax rate. It is not a hidden charge or a new levy. It is the way HMRC tells people what to do.

Time after time, a sole trader or a company director walks into our practice holding a notice they cannot act on. The wording is technical, the steps are unclear, and the deadline is buried in paragraphs. By the time a clear answer reaches them, the penalty has often already landed. The tax authority that should help people stay compliant is, in practice, leaving them to guess.

I run Apex Accountants and Tax Advisors. We work with owner-managed companies, contractors, and landlords across the UK. In my experience, the people hurt most by poor guidance are not the large firms with in-house tax teams. They are the small businesses that read every letter from HMRC as something to fear.

Two problems are driving this, and both are fixable.

The first is Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD for ITSA). The programme will require millions of self-employed people and landlords to send quarterly updates to HMRC. From the front line, the messaging is contradictory. Some clients receive reminders that read like demands; others receive nothing a all; many cannot tell whether their turnover sits above the threshold. When we contact HMRC to confirm a position, the answer can change between operators or arrive weeks after the deadline it was meant to clarify.

The cost is real. A client who misreads a quarterly update and files late faces penalties that, for a small firm, can wipe out a month's margin. When the system is meant to reduce error, that is hard to defend.

The second problem is expenses. Guidance on what a small business can claim changes by sector, by vehicle, by device, and by year. A contractor and a hairdresser can read the same HMRC page and reach

opposite conclusions. We regularly see clients who have overpaid tax for years because they were afraid to claim a legitimate expense and others who underpaid because they followed a forum post from HMRC later contradicted. That is not a firm failing HMRC. That is HMRC failing the firm.

There is a wider effect too. Small businesses now compete on speed. A director who spends three evenings decoding a tax notice is not running their company. They are doing HMRC's job for it.

The fix is not complicated, and it does not require a new policy. HMRC should commit to three things.

First, plain English by default. Every notice should open with three lines: what has changed, what you must do, and by when. Technical detail belongs in a referenced annex, not in the opening paragraph. If a layman reader cannot act on the first sixty words, the notice is not finished.

Second, sector-specific guidance that matches how people actually trade. A hairdresser, a contractor, and a landlord do not share one expense regime in practice. HMRC has the data to publish tailored pages. It should use them.

Third, a single current source of truth. Where guidance, manuals, and operator answers diverge, the taxpayer should not be the one who resolves the contradiction. HMRC should publish the live, dated position and stand behind it. Today, clients are penalised for following advice HMRC later withdraws.

None of this is radical. The new Government has a real opportunity, with the Budget and with MTD for ITSA approaching, to make compliance easier to achieve rather than easier to punish. The Treasury collected record sums last year from a base that is, in the main, trying its best to comply. The marginal gain from clearer language almost certainly exceeds the marginal gain from a new enforcement tool.

Critically, this is not a call for lower tax or weaker enforcement. The headline rates can stay. The rules can stay. What small firms need is to understand them in the same week, not the week after the penalty.

After two decades in practice, I am certain of one thing. The small businesses I advise are not asking HMRC to be softer. They are asking HMRC to be clearer. The cost of confusion is paid first by the firm, then by HMRC in extra contact, then by all of us in lost productivity.

Plain English would close more of that gap than any new initiative I have seen in my career. It is also the cheapest reform available.

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Mr Rana Zubair is Director of Apex Accountants and Tax Advisors. He is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (FCCA) and a Qualified Tax Adviser (ATT). He has over 20 years of experience advising UK small businesses, directors and owner-managed companies on tax compliance and HMRC engagement.