Beauty & hair accountants for London. Salons, mobile, chair-renters.
Solo lash technician working from home? Salon owner with chair-renters and a tronc to run? Multi-site beauty group with booking platforms eating your margin? We get the industry — Treatwell and Fresha commissions, mixed cash and card, the chair-rent grey area, and the Tipping Act 2024 your salon can't ignore. Open Mon-Sat 10am-7pm.
Beauty trades carry quirks generalist firms miss. We don't.
Mixed cash and card. Booking platforms taking 25%. Chair-rent income vs expense. Tipping Act 2024 compliance. Mobile mileage. MTD ITSA for sole traders above £50K. Four problems below show up on every onboarding from a beauty professional who's been with a generalist firm.
"My booking platform takes a quarter of my fee and I don't really see where the money goes."
Treatwell takes around 25% on direct bookings. Fresha is mostly free at the surface but adds up through optional paid extras. Square / SumUp / Zettel each charge per-transaction fees. Without splitting these out as separate lines you can't see your true margin per channel — or whether the booking platform is actually paying for itself in new client value.
"I have chair-renters and nobody told me how to handle the rent income properly."
Chair-renting is one of the most misunderstood arrangements in the industry. The salon receives weekly or monthly rent from each renter — that's taxable income for the salon. The renter pays the rent as a deductible expense and pays their own SA on service income. Get the licence wording wrong and HMRC may reclassify the renters as employees, triggering backdated PAYE and NIC. We handle both sides correctly.
"I'm a sole trader earning £55K and now MTD applies to me?"
Yes — from April 2026 every sole trader and landlord above £50,000 turnover must file quarterly digital submissions to HMRC under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. Annual self-assessment is no longer enough. £150/quarter (£600/year) for the quarterly service. At your scale you should also be looking at limited company conversion which usually saves several thousand pounds AND removes MTD ITSA entirely.
"My tips are taxed at full PAYE and my staff are losing 30%+ of every cash gratuity."
Tips distributed via normal payroll trigger employer NIC (~13.8%) and employee NIC (~12%) on top of PAYE. Tips distributed via a properly constituted tronc with an independent troncmaster save the NIC entirely — that's around 26 percentage points clawed back. The Tipping Act 2024 (in force October 2024) makes a written, fair tipping policy mandatory anyway. Setting up the tronc both saves NIC and meets the legal requirement.
Chair-rent. Get it wrong and HMRC reclassifies your renters.
A salon with chair-renters carries an HMRC employment-status risk that most generalist firms don't even flag. Here's the structure that keeps everyone protected.
Chair-renters must be genuinely self-employed — not disguised employees.
HMRC applies the same employment-status tests to chair-renters as it does to any other contractor relationship. If the salon dictates hours, controls pricing, takes the customer payment first, supplies all the equipment and treats the renter as part of the team rota, HMRC may reclassify the arrangement as employment — backdating PAYE and NIC across the relationship.
A properly structured chair-rent setup needs a written licence agreement with the renter taking the customer payment (or the salon collecting it as an agent and remitting net of rent), the renter setting their own prices, supplying their own consumables, controlling their own appointments, and being free to work elsewhere. We draft (or review) the licence wording, set up the salon-side accounting to record rent income correctly, and offer the renters their own self-assessment service if they want LOYALS to engage them directly too.
Everything a beauty business needs. Bundled, transparent.
Click any service to read the dedicated page. All services delivered in-house by chartered accountants who specialise in personal-services trades.
Self Assessment
Mobile therapists, chair-renters, freelance stylists. Tier 2 most popular at £695/year.
View service →MTD for Income Tax
Mandatory from April 2026 for sole-trader practitioners above £50K turnover. £150/quarter.
View service →Salon Bookkeeping
Booking platform integration, mixed cash-card, chair-rent ledger. From £125-£195/month.
View service →Salon Payroll & Tronc
Weekly or monthly stylist payroll with Tipping Act tronc integration. From £8/employee/month.
View service →Limited Co Accounts
Salon owner Ltd Co accounts and corporation tax. From £1,200/year.
View service →Business Mentor
Free for every client. Pricing strategy, treatment menu margin, retention & growth review.
View service →Find your service mix and fee. Five questions, one minute.
Answer five quick questions about your trade, turnover and team. We'll show you the right service mix, an estimated fee, and flag any MTD or Tipping Act obligations you should know about.
Your beauty & hair position
Based on your answers, here's the right setup.
The fees a beauty business actually pays. Standard, transparent.
Below is the typical service mix and standard fee. Quotes are issued in writing within 24 hours of the call — request one to see what discounts and seasonal offers are available in the current period.
Beauty & hair service fees
All prices exclude VAT. From the master service-fee schedule.
| Service | Description | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Self Assessment — Tier 2 (Self-Employed) Most popular for solo therapists, freelance stylists, chair-renters under £50K |
SE pages, capital allowances, expense optimisation, mileage | from £695/year |
| MTD for Income Tax — Quarterly Service Mandatory April 2026 for sole-trader practitioners above £50K |
4 quarterly digital submissions + year-end finalisation | £150/quarter (£600/yr) |
| Salon Bookkeeping Booking platform + card terminal integration, mixed cash-card |
Treatwell / Fresha / Square reconciliation, chair-rent ledger | from £195/month |
| Tronc Scheme Setup Tipping Act 2024 compliant — saves NIC on tips |
Troncmaster appointment, written policy, HMRC registration | £395one-off |
| Tronc Ongoing Administration Weekly or monthly tip distribution + payslip integration |
Allocation, NIC-saving optimisation, audit trail | from £95/month |
| Salon Payroll Stylists, juniors, apprentices |
Monthly RTI, payslips, P60s, P11D, auto-enrolment | from £8/employee/month |
| Limited Company Accounts Salon owner Ltd Co — Tier 1 solo director |
FRS accounts, CT600, Companies House, confirmation statement | from £1,200/year |
| VAT Plus (Mid-Complexity) Once turnover crosses £90K — services + retail product mix |
Multi-rate handling, partial recovery, MTD filing | from £295/quarter |
What our beauty clients actually got back. Real numbers.
Three recent examples from a mobile lash technician, a salon owner with chair-renters, and a multi-site beauty group. Names changed, numbers real.
£6,400/yr saved by incorporating to escape MTD ITSA
A mobile lash technician doing £62K as a sole trader contacted us in early 2026 worried about MTD for Income Tax. We confirmed MTD ITSA applied (mandatory April 2026) and modelled the limited company alternative. Optimal salary plus dividends through a Ltd Co saved £6,400/year on the same profit AND removed the MTD ITSA requirement (Ltd Cos file Corporation Tax). She incorporated, we set up Ltd Co Tier 1 at £1,200/year. Net annual saving after fees: £4,200.
£20K of HMRC reclassification risk neutralised in one engagement letter
A 4-chair Islington salon came to us with chair-rent agreements her old accountant had drafted in 2019 — she controlled hours, prices and consumables, took customer payments and remitted gross to renters. HMRC's employment-status tests would almost certainly have reclassified the renters as employees, with backdated PAYE and NIC exposure approaching £20K. We rewrote the licence agreements (pricing freedom, equipment-supply, payment route, no rota control), restructured the accounting to record rent properly, and onboarded each renter onto their own SA service.
Tronc setup saved £6,200/yr in NIC across the group
A 3-site beauty group with 14 staff was processing roughly £30K of tips per year through normal payroll, with both sides paying NIC. We set up a fully Tipping Act 2024 compliant tronc with an independent troncmaster across all three sites (£395 one-off per site), then took on monthly tronc administration at £95/month per site. Year-one NIC saving was £6,200 split between the business and the team. Staff felt the take-home increase immediately.
Beauty-specific quote, in writing within 24 hours.
Tell us your trade, turnover, team and platform setup. We'll send a written fixed-fee quote covering exactly the services you need — and any current discounts or offers in the period.
Frequently asked questions.
If your question isn't here, message us on WhatsApp or book a free 15-minute call.
Beauty & hair accountants in King's Cross, London.
Our office sits at 39-41 North Road, London N7 9DP — five minutes from Caledonian Road tube and ten from King's Cross St Pancras. We work with beauty and hair professionals across Islington, Camden, Hackney, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, the City of London, Soho, Shoreditch, Hoxton plus our secondary presence in Wickford / Basildon, Essex.
Most engagements are delivered remotely via video call, WhatsApp and our client portal — but for owner-operators who prefer to meet, the King's Cross office is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm. No appointment fee, no travel charge.
London N7 9DP
10am to 7pm
Ready for a beauty-specialist accountant?
Book a free 15-minute call. We'll quote your engagement in writing within 24 hours including any current discounts or seasonal offers. If LOYALS isn't the right fit we'll tell you that too.
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