Is a limited company worth it on £30k revenue?
Let’s be direct about this one. At £30,000 in revenue, most people are sitting well within basic rate tax territory once reasonable costs come off, and that’s exactly the zone where incorporating tends to cost more than it saves.
Why the maths doesn’t favour it here
The tax saving from a limited company mostly comes from paying yourself dividends instead of taking everything as salary or sole trader profit, because dividend tax rates sit below Income Tax rates. But that gap barely exists at basic rate, and it gets eaten up almost immediately by accountancy fees (typically £600 to £1,500 a year for a small limited company), Companies House filings, and the extra admin of running payroll and dividend paperwork.
Add it up and a sole trader at this level often keeps more, or close to the same, with a fraction of the paperwork.
When £30k changes the answer
If that £30k is genuinely just your first year and growing fast, it may be worth setting up the structure now to avoid a messier transition later, particularly if you already know a big contract or client is coming. If liability is a real concern in your line of work, that can outweigh the pure tax maths entirely.
The honest recommendation
Run your specific numbers, your actual costs, your actual profit, not the headline revenue figure, through our cost of a limited company calculator. At £30k turnover it’s a two minute job to check, and it’ll almost certainly confirm that staying a sole trader for now is the sensible call.