At the Federation of Small Businesses, we're helping you to save time and get set for the year ahead with our must-read checklist for 2023. This guide includes all the deadlines and upcoming changes to legislation that you need to be aware of, including updates to the National Minimum Wage, payroll deadlines, and more.
Want to stay up-to-date with the latest legal news?
Be the first to know about upcoming deadlines and legal issues that matter to small businesses and the self-employed with our monthly Legal Bulletin from FSB Legal and Business Hub, exclusively for FSB members.
Use the menu below to jump to each section of this guide
- Tax deadlines
- Key dates for UK VAT
- National Minimum Wages and statutory rates
- Payroll deadlines
- Additional Bank Holidays 2023
- Recent employment legislation
- Proposed and upcoming changes to legislation
Tax deadlines
Sole traders
As a sole trader, you’ll pay your income tax and National Insurance liabilities in two stages, known as payments on account. These are payments in advance towards your tax bill.
- 31 January 2023 – balance of any tax for year 2021/22 was due
- 31 January 2023 - first payment on account of tax for year 2022/23 was due
- 31 July 2023 – second payment on account of tax for 2022/23 was due
- 31 January 2024 – balance of any tax for year 2022/23 is due
- 31 January 2024 - first payment on account of tax for year 2023/24 is due
Don’t forget, you can contact HMRC for Time to Pay or to set up a payment plan if you’re having difficulties. You have to pay interest if you pay late, so do this as soon as possible.
Self-Assessments
You must file your 2022-23 Self-Assessment tax return before:
- 31 October 2023 following the end of the tax year for a paper return
- 31 January 2024 following the end of the tax year for an online return
New to self-employment?
You must notify HMRC of the potential chargeability to tax and National Insurance Contributions by 5 October following the end of the tax year in which your business started. So, the deadline for the 2022-23 tax year is 5 October 2023.
New partner?
If a new partner has joined you in the 2022/23 tax year, you should notify HMRC by 5 October 2023.
Key dates for UK VAT
1 January 2023: UK VAT returns for periods starting on or after this date fall under the new penalty regime for late returns and/or payments.
31 March 2023: CHIEF* & NES (National Exports System) will be switched off for UK export declarations. All declarations will need to be done via CDS instead. CHIEF was switched off for import declarations on 30 September 2022.
31 December 2023: The Trader Support Service (TSS) will cease. The TSS was set up to help deal with new compliance requirements for goods moving between mainland UK and Northern Ireland post-Brexit.
Routine deadlines will vary depending on your VAT return period and whether you do quarterly, monthly or annual returns.
For example, if your business is on calendar quarters March/June/September/December, due dates for VAT return periods would be:
- VAT returns & associated payments are made by 7 May/7 Aug/7 Oct/7 Feb respectively
- Annual adjustments (if a partly exempt trader) are made on either the Mar or Jun returns (so 7 May or 7 Aug)
Trading internationally?
You can visit our Trade Advisory Hub for guidance and support, including resources from the Department of International Trade.
* CHIEF is HMRC’s old system for declaring imports and exports and has been in the process of being replaced with CDS for some time. These systems are mainly used by freight forwarders, parcel couriers, customs agents, and large import/export traders, but will also impact how smaller UK VAT-registered importers receive their import VAT evidence. For imports previously made through CHIEF, businesses received a paper C79 import VAT certificate. For imports made via CDS however, businesses will instead need to locate and download their import VAT evidence themselves on a timely basis via the CDS system.
National Minimum Wage and statutory rates
The National Minimum Wage hourly rates increase on 1 April 2023 as follows:
- National Living Wage (23+) increases from £9.50 to £10.42
- National Minimum Wage (21-22) increases from £9.18 to £10.18
- National Minimum Wage (18-20) increases from £6.83 to £7.49
- National Minimum Wage (under 18) increases from £4.81 to £5.28
- The Apprenticeship Wage increases from £4.81 to £5.28
Statutory rate changes
The following statutory rate increases also apply from April 2023:
- The weekly rate of statutory sick pay (SSP) increases to £109.40 (up from £99.35).
- The weekly rate of statutory maternity pay and maternity allowance, statutory paternity pay, statutory shared parental pay, parental bereavement pay, and statutory adoption pay increases to £172.48 (up from £156.66)
The lower earnings limit remains at £123 per week. To be entitled to these statutory payments, the employee’s average earnings must be equal to or more than the lower earnings limit.
Payroll deadlines
When you’re managing a team, there are annual payroll reporting and payment deadlines that you need to remember. Find out more about your annual responsibilities with our payroll guide.
6 April 2023 – Update employee payroll records for the new tax year
19 April 2023 - Submit your final Full Payment Summary and Employer payment summary for the year ended 5 April 2022 and pay any tax/NIC due for the year.
31 May 2023 – give a P60 to all employees on your payroll who are working for you on the last day of the tax year
6 July 2023 – reporting of employee expenses and benefits
19 July 2023 – payment of Class 1A NICs by post, 22 July 2023 if paid electronically
Additional Bank Holidays 2023
The Coronation of King Charles III will take place on Saturday 6 May 2023. There will be an additional bank holiday on Monday 8 May 2023.
Do I have to give my employees the day off for additional bank holidays?
The legal position in relation to the additional bank holidays in 2023 is determined by the wording of your employee’s contract of employment. For example, where the contract entitles employees to take as paid leave "all bank and public holidays", rather than restricting this to the usual eight bank and public holidays in England and Wales, to avoid a breach of contract, you will be obliged to grant the additional bank holidays as paid holiday or negotiate otherwise with your employee.
You may choose to grant additional bank holidays as an extra day off on a discretionary basis, where your employee is not entitled to this as a paid holiday under their contract of employment.
Recent employment legislation
Exclusivity clauses
Exclusivity clauses in employment contracts restrict workers from taking on additional work with other employers.
Regulations making exclusivity clauses for zero-hours workers unenforceable have been in place since May 2015 in Britain. This ban on contractual exclusivity clauses was extended to low-income workers whose net average weekly wages do not exceed the Lower Earnings Limit (currently £123 a week) under new Regulations which came into force in England, Scotland and Wales on 5 December 2022.
What do employers need to do to comply with this new legislation on exclusivity clauses?
To avoid a breach of the new regulations and the risk of tribunal claims, employers in Great Britain should ensure that they do not take steps to enforce any exclusivity clauses in existing contracts for low-income workers to whom the regulations apply, such as dismissal or taking disciplinary action for taking on additional employment without authorization, from 5 December 2022 onwards. This is the case regardless of how long they have been employed or engaged by the business.
New contracts issued since 5 December 2022 onwards should avoid the use of exclusivity clauses for low-income workers to which these new regulations apply, as well as zero-hour and causal hour workers, as these clauses are void and unenforceable.
Proposed and upcoming changes to legislation
The following changes have been announced by the Government as proposed new legislation to apply in Great Britain, with no set date yet for when these will become law. At present legislation in these areas remain unchanged.
Flexible working
Whilst of course, all employees may ask to work flexibly outside the statutory flexible working regime and it would be for the employer to accept or reject the request, or reach an agreed compromise, currently, employees need to wait until they have been employed with their employer for at least 26 weeks before they have the legal right to make a flexible working application to their employer which is then dealt with by their employer under the statutory regime that governs flexible working requests.
In a proposed change to the current legislation on flexible working, the Government has announced that it will legislate to:
- remove the 26-week qualifying period before employees can request flexible working, making it a day-one right
- require employers to consult with their employees, to review options, before rejecting a flexible working request
- allow employees to make two (not one, as currently) flexible working requests in any twelve-month period
- require employers to respond to requests within two (not three, as currently) months
- remove the requirement for employees to set out how the effects of their flexible working request might be dealt with by their employer
Tips in the hospitality sector
A new Bill, which the Government has backed, will, when it becomes law, require employers to ensure that all tips, gratuities and service charges they receive or exercise control over, be paid to workers in full without deductions (including without any deductions due to credit card or other administrative charges made to the employer) and by the end of the following month from receipt.
It would also introduce legal obligations to ensure the fairness of arrangements to distribute those tips among workers, either when distributed by the employer or via an independent tronc.
Redundancy during Maternity Leave
Currently, when an employee is on maternity leave, adoption leave or shared parental leave, before making the employee redundancy, employers have a legal obligation to offer them a suitable alternative vacancy, where one exists.
The Government has backed a new Bill, which when it becomes law will extend the current obligation to be offered suitable alternative employment in the event of redundancy through an expanded period covering from when a woman tells her employer she is pregnant until 18 months after the birth.
It is proposed that this extended 18-month window of protection will also apply to employees on or returning from shared parental leave and adoption leave.
Carer’s Leave
The Government has also announced that is backing a new Bill that will introduce a new and flexible entitlement of one week's unpaid leave per year for employees who are providing or arranging care. It will be available to eligible employees from the first day of their employment.
Neonatal Care Leave
The Government has also announced its backing for a new Bill which will allow parents to each take up to 12 weeks’ of paid leave at a statutory rate, in addition to other leave entitlements such as maternity and paternity leave, where their child receives neonatal care following their birth.
Sexual harassment in the workplace
Sexual harassment is unlawful under the Equality Act 2010. The Equality Act 2010 also provides that general harassment against an employee based on a protected characteristic (such as sex or race) is unlawful.
Currently, employers are under no proactive duty to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. However, if an incident has taken place and an individual makes an employment tribunal claim, an employer will potentially be liable unless it can show it took “all reasonable steps” to prevent the sexual harassment from occurring.
The Government has also given its support to a new Bill, which, if it becomes law, would create a new proactive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, alongside considering introducing new legislation which would make employers liable if third parties (such as clients or customers of the employer) harass their employees.
Online Safety Bill
The UK government presented its Online Safety Bill (the Bill) to Parliament on 17 March 2022. The OSB is likely to receive Royal Assent in 2023. The Bill aims in particular to protect children and to tackle illegal and harmful content online. Its biggest impact is expected to be on social media, messaging, search and online advertising services.
Find out more about the Online Safety Bill.
Restriction of promotion of unhealthy foods in medium and large stores
The Food (Promotion and Placement) (England) Regulations 2021 have already partially come into force in 2022. However, on 14 May 2022, the government announced a one-year delay to the introduction of certain new rules restricting the multi-buy deals of high fat, salt and sugar (HFSS) products.
The regulations apply to medium and large retailers (with 50 or more employees) offering prepacked food for sale in-store and online, including franchises and symbol group stores (franchises or arrangements where multiple businesses operate under the same name). The restrictions apply to all businesses that sell food and drink to England, not dependent on whether the business itself is registered in England.
From 1 October 2023 businesses in the scope of the regulations must not offer volume price promotions on food in the scope of the regulations. You can find implementation guidance on the government website.
Data Protection and Digital Information Bill
The Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (the Bill) was intended to make its way through parliament in 2022. Its aim was to make the UK’s data protection regime simpler for businesses, whilst keeping in place necessary protections for individual data subjects. It aimed to introduce more flexibility and makes provision for a variety of measures relating to personal data and other information, including digital information.
It was announced at the most recent Conservative party conference the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced that the government planned to replace UK GDPR with a bespoke British data protection system.
Recent announcements suggest that the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill will either be further delayed, substantially re-drafted, or even scrapped whilst the government takes a fresh look at the UK’s approach to data protection. Obviously, if there is to be a new and entirely separate data protection regime in the UK, then domestic businesses who share data with, or deal with individuals and entities in the EU will need to comply with both the UK and the EU (GDPR) regimes.
As such, the position with regard to how this important area of the law will develop remains extremely unclear, and very much a case of watch this space. Of course, in the meantime, the law with regard to data protection remains unchanged.
Packaging Waste: Extended Producer Responsibility
If you’re affected by the new extended producer responsibility (EPR) for packaging, you will need to collect the correct packaging data from 1 January 2023.
The regulations will apply to all UK organisations that handle and supply packaging to consumers and to businesses.
You must take action to comply if all the following apply:
- you’re an individual business, subsidiary or group (but not a charity).
- you have an annual turnover of £1 million or more (based on your most recent annual accounts).
- you’re responsible for over 25 tonnes of packaging in a calendar year (January to December).
- you carry out any of the packaging activities.
You may need to act if you do any of the following:
- supply packaged goods to the UK market under your own brand
- place goods into packaging that’s unbranded when it’s supplied
- use ‘transit packaging’ to protect goods during transport so they can be sold to UK consumers
- import products in packaging
- own an online marketplace
- hire or loan out reusable packaging
- supply empty packaging
The government website has detailed guidance about what you may need to do.
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill 2022-23
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill (the Bill) was introduced to the House of Commons on 22 September 2022 and makes provision for significant changes to the current status, operation and content of retained EU law. Retained EU law is a distinct category of UK law which was created by the European Union Withdrawal Act (EUWA) at the end of the transition period, based on the EU and EU-derived law that applied to the UK at that time.
The Bill makes provision to remove from retained EU law, at the end of 2023, its special status and EU-derived features, after which time retained EU law will be known as "assimilated law".
The Bill supplies various mechanisms to significantly change the content and operation of retained EU law, and confers extensive powers on the government, but was not accompanied by any policy statement from the government explaining how it intends to use these Bill mechanisms, leaving the extent of legal change uncertain.
The Bill includes (but is not limited to) provisions to revoke EU-derived subordinate legislation and retained direct EU legislation at the end of 2023. This covers a wide range of UK legislation, which derives from EU legislation, including employment and health and safety legislation. The Bill also includes the power to preserve specified instruments or provisions.
The government has stated that there would be a comprehensive programme of reform of retained EU law ahead of the Bill's 31 December 2023 sunset date. The government began to review the substance of retained EU law and published a retained EU law dashboard. However, the dashboard lists retained EU law in general, it does not identify which pieces of retained EU law fall within the scope of the Bill's sunset or indicate the government's future intentions in relation to the law listed.
Read more about the content of the Bill.