Both are cheap, both handle MTD, but one does the heavy lifting for you. Here is the honest 2026 verdict for UK sole traders.
GoSimpleTax costs roughly £45 a year, and that low headline number has won it a loyal following among UK sole traders who just want the cheapest compliant option. TapTax Starter costs £59.88 a year. That extra £14.88 is the entire question on this page: what do you actually get for it, and is the manual data-entry burden of the cheaper option worth carrying?
The short verdict: if you are comfortable reconciling your income and expenses by hand, GoSimpleTax is genuinely fine. If you want your bank to feed transactions in automatically, AI to sort them into the right categories, and a one-tap flow to file quarterly updates to HMRC, TapTax is the more complete tool for daily use. The price gap is small enough that the real decision is about time and effort, not money.
| Feature | TapTax Starter (£4.99/mo) | GoSimpleTax (~£3.75/mo) |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | £59.88 | ~£45 |
| Built for | UK sole traders, MTD from day one | Self Assessment and MTD filing |
| MTD ITSA quarterly filing | Yes, one-tap | Yes, but MTD plans priced separately |
| Automatic bank feeds | Yes | No |
| AI expense categorisation | Yes | No |
| Receipt scanning | Yes | No |
| Data entry style | Largely automated | Mostly manual |
| Mobile experience | Mobile-first app | Web-focused |
| Invoicing | No (by design) | No |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
GoSimpleTax is honest about what it is. It is a structured digital form, built to replace paper Self Assessment returns and, more recently, to handle MTD quarterly submissions. It works. HMRC accepts it. But every figure in it starts with you typing it in.
That means pulling bank statements, adding up income lines, sorting expenses into allowable categories, and transferring those totals into the software. For a sole trader with a simple, low-volume business and a tidy spreadsheet habit, that is perfectly workable. For anyone whose transactions pile up between quarterly deadlines, it becomes a Sunday afternoon project you keep postponing.
TapTax removes most of that loop. You connect your bank account once. Transactions appear automatically. The AI categorisation engine assigns each one to the correct expense category, flagging anything it is unsure about for a quick tap-to-confirm. By the time a quarterly submission is due, most of the work is already done in the background. You can read more about what that quarterly process actually involves in our guide to sole trader quarterly submissions, which is worth reviewing before you commit to either product.
The entry price gap looks like this: GoSimpleTax at roughly £45 a year versus TapTax Starter at £59.88. That is £1.24 a month more for TapTax. Neither is expensive in absolute terms.
But GoSimpleTax prices its MTD features separately from its standard Self Assessment plan. If you need full MTD for Income Tax quarterly filing capability, check the current GoSimpleTax pricing carefully, because the MTD tier may be higher than the base £45 figure. The headline number may not reflect what you actually pay for full compliance from April 2026 onwards.
TapTax Starter includes MTD quarterly filing, bank feeds and AI categorisation in one flat fee. There is also a Free tier, which lets you try the product before committing anything, and a Pro tier at £9.99/mo for more complex sole trader situations. GoSimpleTax offers no free entry point.
If you want a rough sense of your actual tax liability before you even pick a product, the sole trader tax calculator gives you an instant estimate based on your turnover and allowable expenses.
Both products claim MTD for Income Tax compatibility, which matters because the obligation is now live for sole traders earning above £50,000. For those earning between £30,000 and £50,000, the deadline follows shortly after.
The compliance mechanics are the same for both: digital records, four quarterly updates to HMRC per tax year, and a final declaration. Where they differ is in how much work you do to get there. TapTax pulls the data in, sorts it, and presents you with a pre-populated quarterly submission. GoSimpleTax gives you the filing mechanism but expects you to arrive with the numbers already assembled.
For anyone worried about quarterly deadlines and the penalties that follow missing them, the late filing penalty calculator shows exactly what HMRC charges for each missed deadline. The quarterly obligation under MTD makes those deadlines four times more frequent than the old annual return, which is a strong argument for a more automated workflow.
TapTax was designed from scratch as a mobile app. Photographing a receipt, confirming a categorisation, filing a quarterly update: all of these happen in a few taps on your phone. That matters for a plumber who does not sit at a desk, or a freelance graphic designer who manages their finances on the go.
GoSimpleTax is primarily a web product. It is clean and navigable, but it was built around the idea of a sit-down session where you input data. That is a fundamentally different interaction model, and it shows in the daily experience.
Fairness requires this section. GoSimpleTax is cheaper at entry level, and for the right sole trader it is entirely sufficient.
If your business model is simple, perhaps you are a part-time tutor with ten regular students and no variable expenses, the manual approach is not burdensome. You have a handful of transactions per month, you know exactly what they are, and spending twenty minutes a quarter entering them is no hardship. Paying more for automation you do not need is not smart.
GoSimpleTax also has a longer track record with UK sole traders and has earned genuine trust over years of use. If your priority is a proven, low-cost filing tool and you are disciplined about your own record-keeping, it does the job.
Also worth checking: if your tax code looks wrong and you suspect HMRC has you on the wrong basis, neither product resolves that automatically. The tax code checker can help you spot and correct errors before they compound.
You are in scope for MTD from April 2026, you have high transaction volume across multiple platforms, and your phone is your office. TapTax's bank feeds and mobile-first design will save you significant time every quarter. GoSimpleTax's manual input model will feel heavy at your transaction volume.
You invoice three or four clients a month, you have minimal variable expenses, and you are comfortable with spreadsheets. GoSimpleTax is sufficient and the £15 annual saving is a perfectly rational choice. TapTax is not wrong for you, but it is not essential either.
You are not yet mandated for MTD for Income Tax, but you expect your income to grow. TapTax's Free tier lets you build the habit now at no cost, so the transition to mandatory quarterly filing requires no learning curve when the time comes.
This is more common than people admit. If you are staring down a Self Assessment deadline with months of uncategorised transactions to sort, TapTax's AI categorisation will process that backlog faster than manual entry in GoSimpleTax. Starting automated is also better for the quarters ahead.
GoSimpleTax and TapTax are closer than most comparisons in this space. They share the same purpose, serve the same audience, and are separated by roughly £15 a year at entry level. The decision reduces to a single honest question: how much time do you want to spend on your books each quarter?
If the answer is "as little as possible", TapTax's automation earns its small premium many times over. If the answer is "I don't mind doing it myself and I just want the cheapest compliant option", GoSimpleTax is a legitimate choice and you should not feel talked out of it.
When the price gap is under £15 a year, the real comparison is not about cost, it is about how much of your Sunday afternoon you are willing to spend on tax admin.
TapTax connects to your bank, categorises expenses automatically, and submits quarterly updates to HMRC. Free plan, no card required.
