How Much Does an Accountant Cost for a Lorry Driver in the UK?

What does a lorry driver actually pay for an accountant?

Here is the honest range. A self-employed lorry driver who just needs a Self Assessment tax return prepared and filed will typically pay somewhere between £250 and £350 for the year. Want the books kept month to month, the year-end pulled together and the return filed as one tidy package? That tends to start from around £45 a month. Add VAT registration and the price rises again, because your accountant is now preparing four extra returns a year on top of everything else.

An owner-driver, for the avoidance of doubt, is someone who owns or leases their own vehicle and works for themselves rather than being paid through an agency payroll. That is the group this guide is written for, alongside couriers and small haulage firms. If you sit in that camp, your accounting is more involved than a simple employee tax return, and the fee reflects that.

Three things move the number most. The state of your records is the big one: a shoebox of crumpled fuel receipts takes far longer to process than a clean spreadsheet or a bookkeeping app, and you pay for that time. VAT registration is the second, since it adds quarterly work. Location is the third, and London and the South East generally sit at the higher end of any national range. Specialist transport and haulage accountants will often quote a fixed driver-specific fee rather than an hourly rate, which makes budgeting far easier.

If you want the full menu rather than a range, our see our full price list sets out fixed prices by service, and we work with drivers and operators every week through our transport and haulage accountants team. A fixed quote for your own situation comes back to you in writing within 24 hours.

What you get for the fee, and what the cheapest option leaves out

A £99 online return and a proper accountancy service are not the same product, even though both end with a submitted tax return. The cheap option usually keys in the numbers you hand over and presses send. Nothing wrong with that if your affairs are simple. The trouble is that drivers rarely have simple affairs, and the savings live in the detail that a quick-turnaround service has no time to find.

A full service for a driver normally covers bookkeeping (recording your income and expenses through the year), the year-end accounts that summarise your trade, the Self Assessment return itself, and the advice that sits around all of it. Self Assessment, if the term is new to you, is simply HMRC's system for collecting tax from people who are not taxed at source through an employer. Most of the value is in someone who knows the transport sector reviewing what you have actually spent and asking the questions you would not think to ask.

The classic example is expenses that drivers leave on the table. We see the same gaps every month: overnight subsistence never claimed, the truck put through as a running cost instead of a capital allowance, mobile and admin costs forgotten, protective gear and medical renewals ignored. A good accountant builds the full picture. For a complete walk-through of what counts, our guide to allowable expenses for the self-employed covers the categories HMRC accepts and the ones it quietly rejects on enquiry.

Owner-driver, employed or limited company: how your setup changes the fee

Not every driver needs an accountant, and being honest about that matters. If you drive for an agency and you are paid through PAYE (Pay As You Earn, where tax comes off your wage before you see it) or an umbrella company, your tax is largely handled for you. You might still want a one-off review to reclaim expenses HMRC owes you, but you do not need ongoing accounting.

Self-employed owner-drivers are the opposite. You are responsible for your own records, your own Self Assessment and your own tax payments, which is exactly where an accountant earns the fee. Our Self Assessment and personal tax service is built for precisely this, and the cost reflects the year-round work involved rather than a single annual return.

Then there is the limited company route, common once a driver buys a second vehicle, takes on subcontractors or pushes profits well past £50,000. A company brings annual accounts, a Corporation Tax return and usually payroll, so the fee is higher, often around £1,200 a year and up. Whether incorporating is even worth it is a separate question, and the April 2026 dividend rate rise has narrowed the gain. Below roughly £50,000 of profit, staying a sole trader is usually simpler and cheaper.

Is an accountant worth it for a lorry driver?

For most owner-drivers, the answer is yes, and the reason is reliefs rather than admin. Three in particular tend to cover the fee on their own.

Overnight subsistence comes first. When you spend a night away from home, HMRC accepts a reasonable claim for meals and accommodation, and that includes nights spent in a sleeper cab. The approved figure is £34.90 a night, and drivers using a sleeper cab can claim 75 percent of it, around £26.18, where they genuinely incur costs. Multiply that across a year of long-distance work and you are looking at a meaningful deduction that self-filed returns almost always miss. The detail sits in HMRC's self-employment (full) pages and notes.

Capital allowances are the second. A truck is plant and machinery, so it qualifies for the Annual Investment Allowance (the relief that lets you deduct the full cost of qualifying equipment in the year you buy it), currently up to £1 million under HMRC's Annual Investment Allowance rules. Timed well, a £40,000 truck can wipe out a large chunk of a year's tax bill. We covered exactly why in our guide to the Annual Investment Allowance on an HGV versus a car, and the difference between getting it right and wrong runs into thousands.

Running costs are the third, and the one drivers most often get wrong. Owner-drivers of HGVs claim their actual fuel, repairs, tyres, insurance and road tax, not the 45p simplified mileage rate, which only applies to cars and vans. Add the smaller items, mobile, parking, tolls, protective gear, licence and medical renewals, and the picture builds quickly.

Best accountant for lorry drivers: DIY software, high-street or transport specialist?

Three routes are open to you, and the cheapest sticker price is not always the cheapest outcome. Here is how the common approaches compare for a self-employed driver.

This is why drivers with real mileage and overnight work tend to move to a specialist. The software is cheap but blind to your sector, and a generalist may not know the transport reliefs well enough to chase them. A specialist costs more than free software, yet usually returns more than the difference.

What this means for you

Start by being clear about which driver you are. Employed and paid through PAYE? You probably need a one-off expenses review at most. Self-employed or running your own vehicle? An ongoing service almost certainly pays for itself once the reliefs are claimed properly.

Before you commit to anyone, get a fixed fee in writing and check it covers bookkeeping, the year-end and the return, not just the return alone. Ask directly whether they handle overnight subsistence and capital allowances on the vehicle, because the answer tells you fast whether they understand transport. And if you are close to the £90,000 VAT threshold or thinking about a second truck, raise it now rather than at year-end, when your options narrow.

The simplest next step is a short conversation. Bring last year's figures, tell us how many nights you spend away and what you drive, and we will tell you plainly whether a switch is worth it for you.