The small fees your bank, card machine and payment apps take are genuine business costs — and they add up faster than most people expect. This category is for the charges themselves; the interest on loans and overdrafts has a category of its own.
Platform fees hide. Stripe and PayPal deduct their cut before the money reaches you, so you never see an invoice — the money just arrives slightly short. Decide your approach and stick to it: either record the gross sale of £100 plus a £2.60 fee, or record £97.40 of income and no fee. Doing both, or neither, muddies every quarterly update.
The second mistake is mixing up the two money categories. Bank charges and interest each have their own place in HMRC's category list, and keeping them apart means your quarterly totals mean what they say at year end.
Finally, running everything through a personal account makes these claims almost impossible to prove. Free business accounts exist — open one, and the statements do the arguing for you.
Select Bank, credit card and other financial charges for account fees, card machine costs and payment platform fees, logging them monthly. Interest on loans and overdrafts goes in the Interest category instead, noted with the loan it relates to.
Track all your expenses in HMRC's own categories with the MTD Sole Trader Tracker.
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