Enter your farm's rough annual sales and purchase figures. This estimates what the Agricultural Flat Rate Scheme would keep you against what standard VAT registration would let you reclaim, so you know which conversation to have with your accountant.
Feed, fuel, vet bills, contracting, machinery, anything you'd normally pay VAT on.
Enter both figures above to compare the two schemes.
Under the Agricultural Flat Rate Scheme (AFRS), you add 4% to invoices sent to VAT-registered buyers and keep the whole addition, no VAT return required. Under standard VAT registration, you charge and reclaim VAT normally. Whichever gives you the bigger number, the 4% addition or the input VAT you'd reclaim, points toward the better-value scheme for those figures.
The calculator multiplies your annual sales to VAT-registered buyers by 4%, the current AFRS addition, to estimate what you'd keep under the flat rate scheme. It multiplies your annual VAT-bearing purchases by 20% to estimate the input VAT you could reclaim under standard registration. Whichever total is larger is the direction the numbers point.
Run this again after a year with a big capital purchase, a new shed, a replacement tractor, on its own. A single large purchase can flip the answer even if the scheme made sense for years beforehand.
Two simplifications matter here. Not every farm input sits at the standard 20% VAT rate, some are zero-rated or reduced-rated, so your real reclaimable input VAT may be lower than this tool assumes. And the 4% addition only applies to sales made to VAT-registered buyers, if a meaningful share of your sales go direct to the public, the real AFRS benefit is smaller than the full sales figure suggests. Treat the result as a starting point for the conversation, not the final word, the guide itself is explicit that this is a numbers question worth working through properly with an accountant.
For how AFRS actually works, what it replaces, and how it interacts with Making Tax Digital, see the Flat Rate Scheme guide.
FarmHQ codes every receipt to VAT automatically, so the real comparison between AFRS and standard registration is sitting in your actual records rather than a rough annual estimate typed in once a year.
See how FarmHQ worksIt multiplies your annual sales to VAT-registered buyers by the current 4% AFRS addition to estimate what you would keep under the flat rate scheme, and multiplies your annual VAT-bearing purchases by 20% to estimate the input VAT you could reclaim under standard registration. Whichever figure is bigger points toward the better-value scheme for those numbers.
No, it is an estimate. It assumes all your VAT-bearing purchases sit at the standard 20% rate, when in reality some farm inputs are zero-rated or reduced-rated, and it assumes all your sales go to VAT-registered buyers. Treat the result as a starting point for a conversation with your accountant, not a final answer.
4%, as of the current guidance, though HMRC reviews this figure periodically. Always check GOV.UK for the rate in force before relying on it.