Tax Guide for Florists and Floral Designers

The Accounted Business Team·12 March 2026·6 min read

Running a Floristry Business? Here Is What You Need to Know About Tax

Floristry combines creativity with commerce, and the financial side has some quirks that set it apart from other small businesses. Flowers are perishable, demand is seasonal, and the VAT treatment of plants and flowers catches many florists out.

Whether you run a shop, operate from home, work from a market stall, or specialise in wedding and event floristry, this guide covers the tax essentials for the 2025/26 tax year.

Perishable Stock: Timing and Waste

The Cash Flow Challenge

Flowers have a shelf life of days, not months. You cannot stockpile inventory like a retailer selling non-perishable goods. This means you buy stock close to when you need it, and waste is an unavoidable cost of the business.

Claiming Stock Costs

Under cash basis accounting, you claim the cost of flowers and sundries when you pay for them, regardless of when they are sold or used. This keeps things simple. The full cost of purchasing flowers — including any that go unsold and are discarded — is a deductible business expense. Waste is a normal and expected part of running a floristry business, and HMRC accepts this.

Buying at Market

Many florists buy fresh stock at wholesale flower markets (New Covent Garden Market, for example) in the early hours. The cost of the flowers, foliage, and sundries purchased is fully deductible. Keep receipts from every market visit. If you pay cash at the market, make sure you get a receipt or invoice and record the transaction carefully — cash purchases without documentation are harder to defend if HMRC queries your records.

Vehicle Costs for Delivery

Delivering arrangements to customers, venues, churches, and funeral directors is a core part of the business. Your vehicle costs are claimable.

Van or Car

If you use a dedicated delivery vehicle, the full running costs are deductible — fuel, insurance, road tax, MOT, servicing, and repairs. If the vehicle is used for both business and personal journeys, claim the business proportion.

Alternatively, use HMRC's mileage rates: 45p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles, then 25p after that. Keep a mileage log.

Vehicle Purchase

If you buy a delivery van, claim capital allowances under the Annual Investment Allowance. Electric vehicles qualify for 100% first-year allowances, which is worth considering if you are replacing your delivery vehicle.

Market Stall Fees

If you sell from a market stall, the pitch fee is a deductible business expense. This includes daily pitch fees, regular market rent, and seasonal or Christmas market fees. Any costs associated with your market setup — tables, display stands, signage, and shelter — are also claimable.

Wedding and Event Work

Wedding floristry is often the most profitable part of a florist's business, but it comes with its own financial considerations.

Deposits

Most wedding florists take a booking deposit, typically 25-50% of the total. Under cash basis accounting, this deposit is income in the tax year you receive it. If a wedding is cancelled and you refund the deposit, the refund reduces your income in the year of the refund.

Consultations and Proposals

Time spent on consultations and producing proposals is part of running your business. While you cannot claim your own time as an expense, any materials used for mood boards, samples, and trial arrangements are deductible.

Subcontractors

If you hire additional florists or assistants for large events, their fees are deductible if they are genuinely self-employed and invoice you. If you control how they work and provide their tools, they may be employees, requiring PAYE registration.

Venue Setup and Breakdown

Travel to the venue, setup time, and collection of hired items are all part of the service. Vehicle costs and any overnight accommodation (for destination weddings or distant venues) are claimable.

Cold Storage

If you have a floral cooler or cold room — either at your premises or rented — the cost is deductible. This includes the purchase cost of a commercial floral cooler (capital allowances), rental of cold storage space, electricity costs for running the cooler, and maintenance and repairs.

If you use a domestic fridge for business, claim the business-use proportion of the electricity.

Equipment and Sundries

The tools of your trade are all claimable, including secateurs, knives, scissors, and wire cutters, floral foam (oasis), wire, tape, and pins, ribbon, cellophane, wrapping paper, and tissue, vases, containers, baskets, and urns (whether bought for resale or as business assets), cable ties, string, and raffia, water tubes, aqua packs, and flower food, and display stands, easels, and arches.

Small items are revenue expenses, claimed in full. Larger items like display arches or a substantial collection of hired-out vases may be capital items.

VAT on Flowers: The Rules

VAT on flowers is an area where many florists get confused, and for good reason — the rules are not straightforward.

Live Plants and Flowers

Live plants (in soil, in pots, growing) are zero-rated for VAT. Ornamental plants sold in a garden centre, for example, are zero-rated.

Cut Flowers

Cut flowers are also zero-rated when sold as they are — a bunch of tulips wrapped in paper, for example. However, when cut flowers are arranged into a bouquet or an arrangement, particularly with non-food items like vases, ribbon, or cellophane, the supply can become standard-rated at 20%.

The Practical Position

HMRC's guidance states that a supply of flowers that involves significant additional work — arranging, adding non-floral elements, incorporating a container — is a supply of floristry services, which is standard-rated. A simple bunch of flowers with minimal wrapping is zero-rated.

In practice, most of what a florist sells (hand-tied bouquets, table arrangements, wedding floristry, funeral tributes) is standard-rated. Only the simplest bunches of flowers might qualify as zero-rated.

VAT Registration

If your taxable turnover exceeds £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period, you must register for VAT. Given the confusion around zero-rating, it is worth getting professional advice on which of your supplies are standard-rated and which (if any) are zero-rated. Getting this wrong in either direction causes problems — either you overcharge customers or you underpay HMRC.

Insurance

Public liability insurance is essential, especially for wedding and event work where you are working at venues with other people's property. The premium is fully deductible. If you have a shop, contents and stock insurance are also claimable.

Training

Floristry courses, workshops, and masterclasses that improve your existing skills are deductible. This includes advanced arrangement techniques, wedding floristry workshops, and sustainability and foam-free floristry courses. Membership of professional bodies such as the British Florist Association (BFA) or the Society of Floristry is also claimable.

National Insurance

Class 2 NI is £3.45 per week (if profits exceed £6,725). Class 4 NI is 6% on profits between £12,570 and £50,270, then 2% above that.

Record-Keeping

Keep all purchase receipts (especially market receipts), sales invoices, delivery records, wedding contracts and deposit records, bank statements, vehicle records, and VAT records if registered. HMRC requires records for at least five years after the filing deadline.

Bloom Where You Are Planted — Let Accounted Handle the Rest

Floristry is a business of early mornings, creative energy, and constant movement. The last thing you need is to spend your evenings wrestling with spreadsheets. Accounted connects to your bank and automatically categorises your income and expenses — market purchases, delivery fuel, stall fees, and everything in between. Penny, your AI bookkeeper, tracks your spending in real time, flags expenses that need attention, and keeps your records ready for Self Assessment and MTD. Start your free trial with Accounted and let Penny sort the numbers while you arrange the flowers.

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