Sandison Lang Client Newsletter - Spring 2026

Sandison Lang news Issue 35

Spring 2026

MAKING TAX DIGITAL IS FINALLY HERE After several years of discussing the looming prospect of Making Tax Digital for the selfemployed, the scheme is finally now running.

This means that if you manage your practice as a sole trader or if you are a UK landlord, you may need to complete your tax returns via the Making Tax Digital (MTD) scheme.

In fact, more than 860,000 sole traders and landlords now need to start using digital tax reporting.

Since April, those with a gross income of over £50,000 annually from their self-employment or property income have been mandated to submit their returns quarterly – as well as complete the usual annual tax return to make any final adjustments for the year.

From April 2027, sole traders and landlords with income of over £30,000 a year will need to file their tax returns quarterly too and from April 2028, those with income above £20,000 a year will also need to comply.

MTD involves completing quarterly online tax reports as well as a final online submission for the

year. This means filing five tax returns a year rather than one. Each quarter, businesses will need to make an electronic submission to HMRC using appropriate software.

If applicable to you, the first quarterly update under MTD will cover the period from 6 April to 5 July 2026 and will need to be submitted by 7 August 2026. To complicate matters, the tax return for the 2025/26 tax year is not due until 31 January 2027. However, if you need to submit your returns via MTD, we strongly recommend that you complete your annual accounts for the tax year up to 5 April 2026 in April, May or June this year. This will mean that your tax records roll on chronologically to the first MTD reporting quarter which will cover April to June 2026 and will help to simplify your tax submission.

MTD represents a significant shift in the way returns are submitted and there are likely to be substantial teething problems at HMRC as they grapple with handling more interaction with taxpayers rather than less. Nevertheless, we are confident that we can help you to navigate through the system as easily as possible.

If MTD is applicable, your accountant will have discussed your reporting requirements with you directly and how we can help.

Our hassle-free MTD service We are pleased to offer our clients a full MTD service to help comply with the new rules. The fee for each quarterly MTD return is £150 plus VAT, rising to £200 plus VAT for clients with income greater than £90,000 and therefore more complex reporting.

If you have multiple MTD returns, for example, you may qualify for the scheme based on your rental and private practice incomes, then our fee will be £75 plus VAT for each additional tax return needed.

We aim to make MTD as simple as possible for you and look forward to assisting you. Please speak with your accountant if you require any further information.

You may also wish to watch our explanatory webinar of MTD, presented by partner Michelle Trivett, please visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zIkxMBL1q0

Inside this issue: The latest update to reporting employee benefits Sandison Lang News Issue 35 Spring 2026

Accountants to the medical profession

Q&A Q:Why can I no longer use P11D forms to report my employee’s benefits in kind next year?

change, originally due to come into force in April 2026, is part of HMRC’s plan to digitalise the UK tax system (see also Making Tax Digital).

William Myatt writes: Currently we use P11D forms to report expenses and benefits paid to directors and employees which have not been subject to PAYE tax. The annual deadline for P11D forms to be submitted to HMRC for any employees is usually 6 July each year. However, there is a significant change to the way benefits will be reported from April 2027.

Employers who provide taxable benefits in kind to their employees will be required to report these benefits (and pay the Class 1A national insurance contributions due) to HMRC via payroll. The reporting will happen in ‘real time’, typically in the same time frame as salaries are paid so likely to be monthly rather than annually.

It will be mandatory for employers to payroll benefits in kind provided to their employees rather than complete the P11D forms. This

If you need any assistance with Payroll, please contact Emma Richards on emma.richards@sandisonlang.com or 01732 365351.

Safe transfer of personal data Every day, media reports remind us of the dangers of sharing sensitive information online.

information to your accountant, the safest method to do so is to use our secure client portal.

Please remember that if you need to send any

This is particularly relevant if you need to

update or supply your bank account details, for example, to receive any rebates from HMRC. Please upload your banking information to the portal or telephone your accountant as email communications are not secure.

Viewpoint: Michelle Trivett, partner Making Tax Difficult may have been used a few times. While we are ready to help clients submit quarterly returns for the first time, HMRC delayed launching the backstage process by which accountants can do their job making life a little challenging.

Behind the scenes at Sandison Lang we have been busy getting our clients ready for Making Tax Digital. It is fair to say that the nickname coined by our accountancy trade press of

One of the biggest misconceptions is that MTD only affects people with sizeable profits but the benchmark is set for income not profit. If you have a modest profit or even a loss, you will still be required to submit quarterly. One fact we have been happy to set straight is that MTD means quarterly tax payments – that is not the case yet and the scheme refers to quarterly reporting only. Income tax payments remain in January and July for now.

One MTD software company recently conducted a survey among users which found that nearly 20

per cent of respondents compared the stress of the upcoming switch to digital reporting as akin to being chased by a shark! Hopefully your Sandison Lang accountant can take any fear out of it for you.

Meanwhile a Treasury spokesperson said MTD is ‘the biggest modernisation of the tax system for a generation’ and that it would help reduce errors. Interestingly, mistakes by the Revenue caused by wrongly taxing pension withdrawals mean that a staggering £44m was reclaimed by pension savers in the first three months of this year.

It has been 11 years since flexible pension withdrawals were introduced but pension taxation problems continue. At this rate, we could still be ironing out MTD issues for a few years to come.

Thanking you for thinking of us Congratulations to Dr Marion Wood who wins £1,000 in our latest refer-a-friend prize draw.

bi-annual draw. (Please do mention that we might be in touch.)

Do you have a friend or colleague who could benefit from our specialist services? Simply email their contact details to us to be entered into our

You will also receive an entry into the draw if a friend or colleague mentions your name when they first enquire to Sandison Lang. You may

Sandison Lang News Issue 35 Spring 2026

refer as many people as you wish – for every person that you suggest, you will receive another entry into the competition which will be drawn in November 2026.

Many thanks for supporting our business.

Accountants to the medical profession

Interview with Professor Mike Parker qualified. After my house jobs, I'd been lined up for the SHO medicine job in cardiology at the Westminster in the ITU, which was a pretty prestigious jump to a major London teaching hospital. I was quite good at cardiology and the consultant I'd been working for wanted me to do that. I then did a surgical house job and completely changed my ideas. Again, somebody saw in me what I couldn't see myself.

Professor Mike Parker is a retired consultant surgeon with 45 years’ experience in the NHS. He was a general surgeon with a special interest in laparoscopic surgery and coloproctology. Mike is also medical adviser and Trustee to three Charities - Love of the Game, The Falcon Foundation and the European Society of Coloproctology of which he is Chairman.

Why did you go into medicine?

I was only 15 when I first went for an interview at Westminster Medical School, having been a bit of a prig at school and getting 14 O levels by the time I was 14.

I was very green behind the ears and I remember sitting at an interview table with four very eminent people, one of whom was Sir Richard Bayliss, the Queen's physician at the time. One of them asked me why I wanted to do medicine and I heard myself saying, “I've absolutely no idea!” There were a lot of concerned faces but somebody fortunately dug me out of it and probed further.

I explained that I had been doing mathematics, physics and chemistry for a year after my O levels. This was driving me into a career in engineering but I didn’t want that because engines can’t talk and I like to talk to people.

They all drew a sigh of relief and obviously saw in me what I, as a stupid 15 year old, couldn't see in myself, which is that I'm a communicator. To be a good doctor, you need to be a really good communicator. You've got to be able to talk to anybody at any time at their level and make them feel comfortable. Luckily, I got in.

I didn't choose surgery until quite a bit after I'd Sandison Lang News Issue 35 Spring 2026

Towards the end of the six months at St Stephen’s Hospital in Fulham, a senior colleague, Howard Jayne, asked what I was going to do for a career. With only one week left to go until the end of the job, I said I didn’t know and was going to think about it carefully. He told me to take the weekend to think and come back with an answer on Monday morning. I didn't sleep for the whole weekend, pacing the floor in my flat. I went in on Monday and told him I’d decided to do surgery.

He said he knew I would and asked if I had a suit.

When I said no, he gave me five pounds and told me to get to Moss Bros as I had an interview that afternoon at St Thomas's Hospital. That's how things worked in those days – I went for the interview and got the job as he said I would.

You must have had several mentors throughout your career?

Yes quite a few, and two or three mentors who really stood out for me. One of them, Professor Harold Ellis, has sadly just died aged 100. He was the youngest professor of surgery in London and was a brilliant undergraduate tutor. He wrote books galore and never stopped writing. His encouragement to students was unsurpassable and even until his 90s, he was writing to me when I published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal. Within two or three days, I'd get a handwritten letter to say he thoroughly enjoyed it and to keep going.

Of course, for years I thought I was the only one getting these letters. Then a load of us met up and realised we’d all been getting them. It showed what a caring guy he was – he looked after everyone and made sure they did well.

John Kirkham was another mentor, known as the Beast of Balham when I worked for him at St James's Hospital. He was a very difficult man to work for but if you could stand up to the pressure you would learn a lot. In fact, I learned more from him in six months than from several others over five years. I worked for him four times and he showed me how to sort out any surgical problems.

We always used to say you never saw a Kirkham registrar standing at the end of the bed shaking their head and wondering what to do. We were taught how to solve a problem. Even if something went wrong, we knew exactly what to do to put things right.

Peter Hawley who was at St. Mark's when I was a senior registrar is probably the final one. He was the doyen of colorectal surgery and he taught me the polish of how to treat people properly and how to behave really well.

There have been others along the way who've influenced me heavily. During a career in surgery, you pick up the best from each person you work with.

And have you passed on this knowledge to those coming up?

Yes – we learned from Harold who turned us into surgical parrots when we were at the Westminster. He taught us that if an examiner asks how you would deal with a problem, the first thing to say is ‘I'm glad you asked me that question, Sir.’ It gives you 5 seconds to think what you're going to say plus it throws them a little bit as they're not expecting it. We then used to teach that to the people coming through.

On a serious note, he did teach us exactly how to answer questions properly so that it was almost impossible to be wrong and as such, it was very difficult to fail somebody from the Westminster in surgery. It was the art of passing surgical examinations by teaching people how to say things that won't get them the penetrating, nasty question that's the follow-up, which is the one that can make or break you.

You were one of the first people in the UK to perform colorectal surgery laparoscopically…

I learned keyhole surgery at a time when nobody in the UK was doing it and I had to go to Germany to learn. There were three people in the world at the time who could do keyhole gallbladder surgery. That was Joe Petelin in Kansas, Jacques Perissat in Bordeaux and Hans Troidl in Cologne. I couldn't afford to go to America and I didn’t speak French terribly well but I could speak German so I decided to ask Hans. When I phoned him, I attempted my best German but he replied in perfect English having been trained himself by John Goligher in Leeds.

Hans taught people the same way we teach in England – see one, do one, teach one. In three Accountants to the medical profession

Interview continued...

We took our strapline ‘If in doubt, sit them out’ from a father, Peter Robinson, who tragically lost his son Ben to a concussion injury in rugby. Peter didn’t want people to stop playing rugby because he had played it all his life and it had given him camaraderie, friendship, respect and discipline.

He knew it had to be better managed. We used that strapline on the guidelines in his son’s honour.

Mike enjoys flying this Piper Cherokee and is Trustee of the Falcon Foundation

weeks, I did 26 laparoscopic cholecystectomies under his supervision.

I came back to England as probably the only person who could do it at the time but I couldn't make strategic decisions then because I was a senior registrar. I asked the head of surgery in St. George's if I could buy the kit to start doing keyhole surgery but was told it would never catch on! I got a consultancy a year later and then started doing it.

After retirement you continued to teach laparoscopic surgery?

After I retired from the NHS, Soren Laurberg from the University of Aarhus asked if I would go to Denmark to teach consultants how to do keyhole surgery for bowel cancer. I have a total inability to say no to anything so I agreed. For the next four years, I went to Denmark every Sunday night to teach all day Monday and Tuesday and then fly home again. In that time, I think I took over 200 flights and taught about 36 consultants. The result was that Denmark increased their laparoscopic resection rates for bowel cancer from 8% to 92% with world class outcomes which was extremely gratifying. After that, I really did retire from clinical practice.

How did you get involved with Love of the Game?

The Charity is working to find solutions to the problem of sports concussion injuries. I was one of the medical officers to the Rugby Football Union

at Twickenham between 1994 and 2006 and I played rugby previously so I understood the issue.

We've been going five years now, raising money for research and awareness of the problems. We recently presented guidelines for the management of grassroots sports concussion treatment to the government and they were adopted and published in 2023. We’d put together a network of about 20 of the top neurologists, neurosurgeons and neuropsychologists, neuroanatomists and neuro radiologists across the country. I was helped by Peter Hutchinson, professor of neurosurgery in Cambridge who co-chaired meetings with me.

I saw 266 games consecutively in my time with the RFU at Twickenham. I hope I treated the concussion injuries okay but I certainly didn't know then what we now know, and I might have done things a bit differently had I known more at the time.

Are there any other demands on your time?

I'm Chairman of Trustees of the European Society of Coloproctology which has 2,500 members. We had our annual meeting in Paris last year in September, and we had 3,500 surgeons from all over the world so it was a great convention. We provide a lot of activities throughout the year and an extensive training programme.

I’m also trustee of the Falcon Foundation which aims to give young people access to opportunities in STEM, aviation and aerospace.

One of my hobbies is flying planes so I enjoy being involved.

I am a Founder Director of a surgical innovations company designing instruments and devices which might improve surgical and medical outcomes which was established in 2020.

Mike's 56-year-old MGB Roadster

Our latest mission is to raise money so that we can run a major educational programme nationwide for all the grassroots clubs. The topline clubs are fine as they’ve got plenty of people to help but it’s different at grassroots level when you might not have anybody trained in concussion treatment at the game.

I like to be busy! I watch a lot of rugby, mostly as a member of the Silver Hippos which is a touring club based at East London RFC. I am also a longstanding MCC member and I’m restoring a couple of old cars. One of them was my first car, an MGB Roadster and the other is a Bristol 407 which is very rare. I also play keyboard in a blues band, the Mike Panos Blues Band and was recently invited to join a Status Quo tribute band which is forthcoming. It's fun and it keeps me off the streets!

SANDISON LANG Specialist accountants to the medical profession 2 St Mary's Rd Tonbridge TN9 2LB Sandison Lang News Issue 35 Spring 2026

01732 365351 office@sandisonlang.com

www.sandisonlang.com Accountants to the medical profession