If you started earning from OnlyFans, Fansly or Fanvue for the first time in the 2025–26 tax year and made more than £1,000, HMRC wants you registered for Self Assessment by 5 October 2026 — four days from now. Miss it, and you move straight into penalty territory, even if you haven’t underpaid a penny of actual tax yet.
Why it matters to creators
This isn’t a filing deadline — that’s still 31 January 2027. It’s the much quieter registration deadline that catches people out every year, and this year HMRC has gone out of its way to put side hustles, specifically, in the firing line. The department’s own research suggests one in ten people in the UK operate in a “hidden economy” of undeclared income, and that most of them simply didn’t realise they had to tell anyone. For a new creator, “I didn’t know” is not a reasonable excuse HMRC will accept, and the penalty clock for not notifying them starts running whether or not you knew it existed.
Who actually needs to register
The rule is the £1,000 trading allowance. If your gross income from content platforms — before any expenses, subscription fees or chargebacks are deducted — went over £1,000 at any point between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026, you need to register for Self Assessment, even if the rest of your income already goes through PAYE from a day job. HMRC’s July press push on this made the threshold explicit:
“For many people, a side hustle is a valuable source of extra income. If you’re earning more than £1,000 a year from your side hustle it’s important to understand your tax responsibilities, and HMRC wants to make that as straightforward as possible. You can check if you need to do a Self Assessment tax return by using the tool on GOV.UK. It takes minutes to use, tells you exactly what you need to do and means no unexpected tax bills later.” — Kevin Hubbard, HMRC Director of Small Business & Individuals
Under £1,000 and you’re inside the trading allowance — nothing to declare, nothing to register. Already filed a return for 2024–25 and simply continuing the same business? You don’t need to register again; you just need to file on time in January. This deadline is specifically aimed at people who are new to Self Assessment this year.
HMRC already has the numbers
Worth remembering: this isn’t HMRC relying on creators to volunteer the information. Under the UK’s platform reporting rules, OnlyFans and similar platforms are legally required to hand HMRC your earnings data directly, which we covered in detail when the first reporting deadline landed. That data-sharing pipeline is exactly why “I’ll just deal with it if they ask” is a worse bet than it used to be — HMRC isn’t guessing who to send a nudge letter to, it’s working off platform-supplied figures that already show whether you crossed £1,000.
What happens if you miss 5 October
Missing the registration deadline doesn’t trigger an automatic fine the way a late tax return does. Instead, you’re exposed to a “failure to notify” penalty, calculated as a percentage of the tax HMRC says you should have paid on time. According to guidance compiled by the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, the range depends on how HMRC classifies your behaviour and whether you came forward yourself or got caught:
- Non-deliberate, disclosed within 12 months: 0% to 30% of the tax owed
- Non-deliberate, disclosed after 12 months: 10% to 30%
- Deliberate: 20% to 70% (35–70% if HMRC prompted you first)
- Deliberate and concealed: 30% to 100% (50–100% if HMRC prompted you first)
Register late but with a reasonable excuse and no penalty applies at all — but “I didn’t think OnlyFans counted as a real job” has not historically counted as one. The safest number to aim for is zero: register on time and the whole penalty question never comes up.
What to do now
- Add up everything paid into your bank from OnlyFans, Fansly, Fanvue or any platform between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026, before fees — if it’s over £1,000, you need to register.
- Use HMRC’s own check-if-you-need-to-send-a-tax-return tool — it takes a few minutes and tells you which registration route applies (sole trader vs. other income).
- Register online directly through gov.uk/register-for-self-assessment rather than through a search-ad lookalike site — HMRC’s own portal is free.
- If you’ve already missed previous deadlines or had a nudge letter, get an accountant who specifically works with creators before you self-report — our full Self-Assessment guide for creators covers what records to keep from here.
- Don’t wait for the January filing deadline to think about any of this — registration and filing are two separate deadlines with two separate failure points.
This is general information, not legal or tax advice — speak to a qualified accountant about your own situation.
None of this is a reason to panic about the money itself. Plenty of creators are turning OnlyFans income into real, durable financial outcomes once the tax side is handled properly — this creator bought her first property mortgage-free from her earnings, and UK lenders are increasingly used to seeing OnlyFans income on mortgage applications — but none of it holds up if HMRC registration gets missed in the first place.
