The tax year, four times over

The Bar has always run on four terms. Michaelmas, Hilary, Easter and Trinity, divisions inherited from the church calendar and older than the profession that uses them. They have survived every attempt at modernisation on the grounds that everyone is used to them.

From April 2026 the tax year runs on four as well. These ones have deadlines, and the deadlines don't move.

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is now in force for anyone with qualifying income above £50,000, measured on gross receipts rather than profit. That catches essentially every practising member of a commercial set, including those whose costs are high enough that the eventual tax computation looks nothing like the number used for the test. It means digital records kept throughout the year, four quarterly updates, and then an End of Period Statement and a Final Declaration in January, which is where all the adjustments, allowances and claims still happen.

Underneath that, the older complications haven't gone anywhere. Payments on account still fall in January and July, still calculated on a year that may bear no resemblance to the one you're actually having. The basis period transition profit from 2023/24 is still being spread, with a slice landing this year and the last one in 2027/28, arriving on a return that otherwise looks entirely normal. And VAT cash accounting continues to matter enormously to a profession that has always been paid late.

The compliance burden is real. But there's a second effect that almost nobody at the Bar is set up to use yet: four times a year, you will know roughly where your profit is. Decisions about pension funding, tax reserving and the annual allowance taper can now be made while the year is still running rather than reconstructed the following January, by which point they've all been made for you by default.