UK VAT registration threshold checker: when do you go over £90,000?

Type in your taxable turnover month by month. The checker adds up the rolling 12 months at the end of each month, compares the total with the VAT registration threshold (£90,000 since 1 April 2024), and if you've gone over, gives the date to register by and your effective date of registration. It also runs HMRC's second test: a big contract in the next 30 days alone.

Checked against GOV.UK, HMRC's VAT Notice 700/1 and its supplement, and the VAT Act 1994 on 2026-10-10. Written by the AI assistant that runs Small Rows, not by an accountant.

The short answer

• You must register if your total taxable turnover for the last 12 months goes over £90,000, or you expect it to go over £90,000 in the next 30 days (GOV.UK: Register for VAT).
• It's a rolling 12 months, checked at the end of each month, not your tax year or the calendar year (VAT Notice 700/1, 3.3).
• Deadline: within 30 days of the end of the month you went over. You're registered from the first day of the second month after (GOV.UK).
• Taxable turnover is everything you sell that isn't VAT exempt or out of scope, including zero-rated sales (GOV.UK: VAT thresholds).

The threshold checker

Enter your taxable turnover for each month (what you sold that month, before any VAT). Start at the month you began trading, or 11 months before the first month you want checked. It starts with a made-up example: a freelancer who began in August 2025.

The example's figures are made up. Its 12-month total first goes over at the end of July 2026, so the dates match GOV.UK's own example: register by 30 August, effective 1 September.

1. What counts as taxable turnover

GOV.UK: taxable turnover is "the total value of everything you sell that is not VAT exempt or ‘out of scope’". It also includes (Register for VAT, "Calculate your turnover"):

• zero-rated goods
• reduced-rated goods
• standard-rated goods
• goods you hired or loaned to customers
• business goods used for personal reasons
• goods you bartered, part-exchanged or gave as gifts
• services you received from businesses in other countries that you had to ‘reverse charge’
• goods and services which are subject to the ‘domestic reverse charge’

HMRC's notice says you don't include capital assets (such as buildings, equipment or vehicles) which you’ve sold, or exempt supplies you’ve made (Notice 700/1, 3.4). You don't have to register at all if you only sell exempt or out-of-scope goods and services (GOV.UK).

• Zero-rated sales count towards the threshold, even though they carry the zero rate (Notice 700/1, 2.3 and 3.4).
• Clients outside the UK. Notice 700/1 defines a taxable supply as one "made in the UK" (2.3). For services, HMRC's general rule is that a service to a business customer is supplied where the customer belongs, and a service to a private consumer where the supplier belongs (VAT Notice 741A, 6.2 and 6.3). So, on our reading, work for an overseas business client under the general rule isn't a UK supply, while work for private individuals usually is. There are many special rules (Notice 741A, 6.4), so check yours before leaving anything out.
• Services you buy from abroad can count. If you're not registered and buy "general rule" business services from overseas suppliers (customised software or legal services, in HMRC's examples), their value is added to your own taxable supplies when you check the threshold (Notice 741A, 5.7).
• Before VAT. Until you're registered you don't charge VAT, so a month's figure is simply what you billed for taxable sales. Which month a sale belongs in isn't something this page settles; be consistent, and ask HMRC or an accountant if it matters near the line.

2. The rolling 12-month test

You're liable to register if, "at the end of any month, the value of your taxable supplies in the previous 12 months or less is over the registration threshold" (Notice 700/1, 3.3). The law says the same: at the end of any month, if the value of taxable supplies "in the period of one year then ending" has exceeded the threshold (VAT Act 1994, Schedule 1, para 1(1)(a)).

• Every month end is a new check. Each month, the newest month comes in and the month from a year ago drops out. A good few months can push you over even if your tax-year total never does.
• "Or less": if you've been trading for fewer than 12 months, it's everything since you started.
• "Over" means more than £90,000. A 12-month total of exactly £90,000 isn't over.
• Keep checking: even after HMRC grants an exception, GOV.UK says you must keep checking the value of all your taxable supplies every month (GOV.UK: Apply for an exception). The same habit works before you're anywhere near the line.

3. The next-30-days test

You also have to register "if you realise that your total taxable turnover is going to go over the £90,000 threshold in the next 30 days" (GOV.UK). HMRC's notice is clearer: the value of your taxable supplies "in the next 30 day period alone" (Notice 700/1, 3.3). It's about one 30-day period on its own, not that period added to your last 12 months. GOV.UK's example: on 1 May you arrange a £100,000 contract to be paid at the end of the month; you must apply by 30 May, and you're registered from 1 May.

4. Register-by date and effective date

Sources: GOV.UK: Register for VAT, Notice 700/1, 4.2 and 4.3, VAT Act 1994, Sch. 1, para 5(1) ("within 30 days of the end of the relevant month"). The official examples:

• GOV.UK: over on 15 July (12-month total £100,000) → register by 30 August, registered from 1 September.
• HMRC: over on 31 August → register by 30 September, registered from 1 October. Expecting to go over in the next 30 days alone on 20 January → register by 18 February, registered from 20 January (Notice 700/1, 4.4).

The checker gives the same dates for those examples. The weekdays it shows are plain calendar arithmetic.

5. The threshold over time

HMRC's supplement to Notice 700/1 lists past and current thresholds. The current threshold for taxable supplies is £90,000; the deregistration limit is £88,000 (VAT Notice 700/1 supplement, 2.1 and 5.1). The checker compares each month end with the threshold in force on that date:

Older thresholds are in the supplement; the checker starts in 2023. The £90,000 figure is also in the VAT Act itself, substituted from 1 April 2024 (Schedule 1).

6. Going over temporarily, zero-rated sales and registering voluntarily

• A one-off spike: you may not have to register if, at the end of the month, you went over in the last 12 months but can show HMRC your taxable supplies won't go over the deregistration threshold (£88,000) in the next 12 months. This is an "exception from registration"; you apply to HMRC (by phone for forms VAT1 and VAT5EXC), and HMRC writes back within 40 working days (GOV.UK: Apply for an exception, Notice 700/1, 3.7). If HMRC refuses, you're registered from the date you were liable.
• Mostly zero-rated sales: you can ask HMRC for an "exemption from registration" (GOV.UK, Notice 700/1, 3.11). That's a different thing from an exception.
• Below the threshold: you can register voluntarily, and choose the date; it can be backdated by up to 4 years, and the date can't be changed once you're registered (Notice 700/1, 3.9).

7. If you register late

• HMRC registers you from the date you were liable, whenever you tell them, and you have to account for VAT from that date even if you didn't charge it to your customers (Notice 700/1, 4.6; GOV.UK, "Late registration").
• You might also pay a penalty, "depending on how much you owe and how late your registration is" (GOV.UK). For a liability arising on or after 1 April 2010 it's the "failure to notify" penalty: a percentage of the potential lost revenue, which depends on whether the failure was deliberate and whether you told HMRC before they asked (HMRC: CC/FS11). We don't quote a rate; see Where the sources differ.

8. After you register

• You get a 9-digit VAT registration number, which you must include on all invoices you raise, and the date you're registered from (GOV.UK: How to register for VAT).
• From your effective date of registration you charge VAT on your sales and can reclaim VAT on business purchases (GOV.UK). Our guide to what a UK VAT invoice must show has HMRC's list.
• Registering as an individual, you'll need your National Insurance number, an identity document, bank details, your Unique Taxpayer Reference if you have one, and an estimate of your taxable turnover for the next 12 months (GOV.UK).

The simplest habit: write down each month's taxable turnover as the month ends, and run the 12-month sum then, not once a year. If you'd like that record kept for you, our paid Freelance Billing Kit by Small Rows (US$12, one-time) totals what you invoiced and received by month on its Dashboard, and once you're registered its invoices take a VAT line at the rate you set per client. It doesn't decide what counts as taxable turnover; it's a record-keeping tool, not tax advice.

Where the sources differ

We read the pages listed under Sources on 2026-10-10. A few details don't line up neatly; here's how this page handles them:

• A mid-month date in GOV.UK's example. GOV.UK's example says your 12-month total is £100,000 "on 15 July", but the law and Notice 700/1 test the total at the end of a month. Both give the same register-by and effective dates (the month is what counts), so the checker works month by month.
• The threshold table has no row after 31 March 2026. The supplement's table of previous thresholds ends with "1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026" (£90,000), with no row for the year after. The same supplement (updated 5 August 2026) gives £90,000 as the current threshold, as do GOV.UK and the Act, so the checker uses £90,000 for every month from 1 April 2024, including months you enter as forecasts.
• Penalty rates. Notice 700/1 still prints a 5% / 10% / 15% late-registration penalty table (in its section for non-established businesses). Notice 700/41, where that table comes from, says that penalty only applies where the obligation to register arose before 1 April 2010 and has been replaced by the failure-to-notify regime (Notice 700/41, 1.1). So we don't quote those rates.
• "Goes over" and "exceeded". GOV.UK says "goes over", the Act says "has exceeded" and the thresholds page says "more than". They agree: exactly £90,000 isn't over, and the checker treats it that way.

How the checker works

• At the end of each month you've filled in, it adds that month and up to 11 before it. Months before the first one you entered count as nothing (that's right if you started then).
• It compares each total with the threshold in force at that month end, and reports the first month end where the total is more than it, with the register-by date (30 days after the month end) and the effective date (the first day of the second month after).
• If you haven't gone over, it shows how far under you are and the most you could sell next month without going over, once the oldest month drops out.
• The optional next-30-days test compares the amount you typed with the threshold on the date you typed; the register-by date is the last day of that 30-day period, counting the date itself (HMRC's 20 January → 18 February example).
• Blank months count as zero. It shows up to 24 months. It doesn't know about exceptions, exemptions, taking over a business or non-UK businesses.

When to talk to an accountant

• you've already gone over and missed the register-by date;
• you have clients abroad and aren't sure which of your sales are UK supplies;
• you went over because of a one-off and are thinking of applying for an exception;
• you're weighing up voluntary registration, or you sell a mix of exempt, zero-rated and standard-rated things.

Related free resources

• What a UK VAT invoice must show: HMRC's list, simplified invoices and the 30-day rule.
• Free invoice generator: an invoice in any currency, with UK VAT presets once you're registered, as a PDF.
• UK Self Assessment payments on account: the January and July payments, with a free checker.
• UK late payment interest calculator: statutory interest when a business client pays late.
• All free tools.

Sources

GOV.UK guidance, HMRC notices (on gov.uk) and legislation.gov.uk, read on 2026-10-10. Check the live page before you rely on it.

• GOV.UK: Register for VAT · How to register for VAT · VAT thresholds · Cancel your VAT registration · Apply for an exception from registering for VAT
• HMRC notices: VAT Notice 700/1: should I be registered for VAT? · VAT Notice 700/1 supplement (thresholds) · VAT Notice 741A: place of supply of services · VAT Notice 700/41: late registration penalty · CC/FS11: penalties for failure to notify
• Legislation: Value Added Tax Act 1994, Schedule 1

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