Monday, October 13, 2025
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Brought forward

2 min read

What does it mean to “bring forward” a loss from the previous tax year? It means to use it as a cost this year. “Carrying forward” in this year’s terms.

You can move forward as a sole trader or a limited business.

Could you repeat that?

Before you can understand how to bring something forward, you need to know how to move something forward.

Imagine that you are writing down your income and spending in a journal. When the page is over, you move on to the next page with your opinions, whether you made money or lost money. You bring over the profit or loss from the last page when you start on the next one.

To put it simply, moving forwards means putting money into the next tax year and bringing forwards means taking money from the previous year.

Why bring it up?

One way to save money on taxes is to bring forward. If you lose money one year, you can use it as a cost the next year to lower your profit.

  • During the tax year of 2022–23, you lose £5,000.
  • Your business makes £40,000 in the 2023–24 tax year.
  • You’ll have to pay tax on the £35,000 difference.

So, you would bring forward a loss to lower the amount of tax you have to pay on your next year’s earnings. But as of 2017, you can only use losses to match wins from the same trade. So, you’ll need to separate your records into those that were made before the following dates:

  • Before April 1, 2021.
  • After April 1, 2021, but before then.

An “Opening Balance” is any balance from the previous year that you bring forward.

What kinds of losses can be brought up?

These are some types of losses that can be brought forward:

These are things you can claim on your tax return.

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