Change your tax year

Understand how your account's start date is determined and how you can change it if needed in Sage Accounting Individual.

When you first set up your Sage Accounting Individual account, the start date is automatically aligned with the tax year, which runs from 6th April to 5th April.

Here's how it works:

• If your account is set up between 6th April and 31st December: Your start date will be 6th April of the current calendar year
• If your account is set up between 1st January and 5th April: Your start date will be 6th April of the previous calendar year

Before you start

We understand that sometimes you might need to change your account's start date. You can do this, following these rules:

Current date	Change conditions
Between 6th April and 31st December	You can change the start date to 6th April of the previous calendar year.
Between 1st January and 31st January	You have the option to set the start date back to 6th April of the last two calendar years.
Between 1st February and 5th April	Changes to a previous tax year are not possible due to the submission deadline for that tax year.

Change your tax year

If you change from the current tax year to the previous one, you cannot change back to the current tax year later. This is to prevent discrepancies, since the start date would then occur after transactions have been recorded. 

1. From Settings select Tax year.
2. Select the relevant tax year from the dropdown. 
3. In the pop up window, confirm you want to change the tax year. 
   
4. Select Save.

---

Resolve errors

There are several reasons why you might not be able to change your tax year:

• The submission deadline has passed
  
• You are already using this tax year
  
• You have a bank opening balance, read how to delete your bank opening balance.