SimpleReturns

Company tax returns for personal trainers

Reviewed by Lee Jones, Founder · Updated 16 July 2026
The short answer

Your limited company has the same yearly job as every other company in the country: send HMRC a Company Tax Return (the CT600) with accounts, and send accounts to Companies House. Training clients instead of selling products does not change that, even in a year you made a loss. What is different is your version of the story: session money that arrives as cash, card and app bookings on the income side, and floor fees, insurance, kit, courses and mileage on the costs side. Here is the standard filing duty, told for a personal trainer.

Official source. This guide is a plain-English summary of official GOV.UK guidance, not advice. The authoritative source is Company Tax Returns on gov.uk. Always rely on that over our summary.

What counts as your company's income?

Everything your company earns for training people, however it arrives. That means one-to-one session fees, block bookings paid up front, classes a gym pays you to take, online coaching plans, and bookings that come through an app. If a client pays through an app that keeps a slice as commission, the full amount the client paid is your company's income, and the slice the app kept goes on the costs side instead.

Two things catch personal trainers out here. First, cash counts. The £40 a client hands you after a session is company income the moment you take it, exactly like a card payment. More on that below. Second, quiet years still count. If the company made very little, or made a loss, it still has to send the return.

One to watch as you grow: your turnover for VAT is the gross income before any app takes its commission. If that reaches £90,000 across any rolling 12-month period, the company must register for VAT, a separate job worth an accountant.

What can your company claim?

One test decides it: was the money spent purely to run the business? If yes, the cost comes off your income before Corporation Tax is worked out, so it is money you do not pay tax on. If a cost is partly personal, only a clearly separate business part can go in. These are the costs personal trainers genuinely tend to have.

  • Gym rent or floor fees. What you pay a gym for the right to train your clients there, whether that is a monthly rent or a per-session fee. A pure cost of the work.
  • Insurance. Your public liability and professional cover for training clients.
  • Kit. Weights, bands, mats, a bench, a laptop for programming. For almost every small company the full cost comes straight off your profit in the year you buy it, up to a very high yearly limit.
  • Qualifications and courses. Training that keeps the skills you already sell up to date, or adds new ones for the work your company already does, sits on safe ground: a first aid renewal, a refresher, a new coaching qualification. The company can fund work-related training like that to grow what it offers, with no extra personal tax for you. The one to check with an accountant is a genuinely unrelated retraining, into something that is not really personal training any more.
  • Music and app subscriptions. The booking system, the coaching and programming apps, and music you pay for purely to run sessions. Be honest here: your own personal music subscription does not become a business cost just because you sometimes train to it.
  • Mileage to clients. If you drive your own car to a client's home, a park session or a gym you visit for one booking, the company can pay you a set rate per business mile: 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year (6 April to 5 April), then 25p after that. Your everyday drive to the same gym you always work from is a commute, not a business journey, so it does not count. Our guide on claiming travel and mileage goes deeper.

The trap in this trade: the cash session that never reaches the bank

Here is the one that catches personal trainers more than anything else, and it is almost never dishonesty. It is habit. A client pays £40 in cash, it goes in your pocket, and by Friday it has become fuel and a food shop. It never touches the company's bank account, so when filing time comes, it is invisible.

The rule is plain: your company's records must cover all money it received, not just the money that reached the bank. Income is income whether it was banked or not. A return built only from the bank statement, when cash sessions happened off it, understates your income, and HMRC can fine a company £3,000 just for poor records, before any question about the tax itself.

The fix is small. Either pay cash takings into the company account, or write every cash session down the same day, even in a notes app: date, amount, done. Then the income is on the return where it belongs. One more thing: that cash was the company's money, so spending it on your own fuel and food shop is really you taking money out. Taking company money is its own question, a salary, a dividend or a director's loan, each with its own rules, so if you have been dipping into cash all year it is worth an accountant's look, not just declaring the income and moving on.

What does filing look like with SimpleReturns?

You upload your company's bank statement and answer a few plain-English questions, and one of them is about cash, asked straight: did any sessions get paid in cash that are not in the bank statement? You tell us the figure, and it lands in the right place.

From there we sort your year into income and costs, apply the rules above, work out the profit and the Corporation Tax on it, and build your accounts and your CT600. Most personal trainer companies sit comfortably in the small profits band, where the rate is 19 percent. You check every figure, then we file to HMRC and Companies House for you. One flat £99 for the submission, free to start, no card needed.

One honest deadline note: the return is due 12 months after your company's year end, the tax is usually due earlier, at 9 months and 1 day, and a late return now costs £200 from the very first day. Filing early costs nothing and ends the worry.

Common questions

Does cash I get paid for sessions count as company income?

Yes. Every session fee counts the moment you take it, and cash counts exactly like a card payment. Your company's records must cover all the money it received, not just what reached the bank, so cash sessions go on the return even if they never touched the account.

My company made very little this year. Do I still have to file?

Yes. An active company has to send HMRC a Company Tax Return with accounts every year, even in a quiet year or one where it made a loss. Training clients rather than selling products does not change that.

Can my company claim my gym floor fees, insurance and kit?

Yes. Floor fees, public liability and professional insurance, and kit like weights, mats and a laptop are all normally allowable, so they come off your profit before Corporation Tax. Anything part-personal can only go in for the clear business share.

Can I claim the miles I drive to clients?

If you use your own car to reach a client's home, a park session or a gym you visit for one booking, the company can pay you 55p a mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the tax year, then 25p after that. Your everyday drive to your usual gym is a commute and does not count.

When is everything due, and what does filing cost with SimpleReturns?

The return is due 12 months after your company's year end, and the tax is usually due earlier, at 9 months and 1 day. A late return now costs £200 from the very first day. SimpleReturns files both the tax return and the accounts for a flat £99.

Ready to file your personal trainer company's return?

You upload your company's bank statement and answer a few plain-English questions, including one about cash sessions that never reached the bank. We build your accounts and your CT600, work out the Corporation Tax, and show you every figure to check. Then we file both filings, the tax return to HMRC and the accounts to Companies House, for £99, once.

Start your return

And if your company has grown past personal training, say into a gym with staff and a lease, an accountant may be the better fit.

General guidance, not advice. This guide explains how the rules generally work for small UK limited companies. It isn't tax advice for your specific situation, if you're unsure, check with us or an accountant.