Making Tax Digital – The Short Version

Making Tax Digital sounds complex but in the first phase all that it means is that all VAT registered businesses must be submitting VAT returns straight from Software starting in April next year.

Making Tax Digital – The Slightly Longer Version

HMRC’s Making Tax Digital initiative is edging ever closer. So with just six months to go until it comes in here is a review of where we are.

Here is HMRC’s take on it https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digital-how-vat-businesses-and-other-vat-entities-can-get-ready/making-tax-digital-how-vat-businesses-and-other-vat-entities-can-get-ready

Whilst the later phases are still clouded in confusion, the initial phase which covers VAT is now coming and clients will need to submit their VAT returns straight from the software. No more totting up invoices on a calculator and then typing the VAT return numbers in to the HMRC VAT portal. It isn’t even clear if a spreadsheet will suffice.

So the bottom line is that in practice all VAT registered businesses should be converting to electronic bookkeeping by the end of 2018 to be ready for the change. Clients using old unsupported versions of Sage will either have to upgrade to the latest version or even better convert to a cloud accounting package.

Many of our clients wont notice the difference as they are already on Xero, Freeagent or Kashflow either supported by us or with us doing their bookkeeping. However, the few that are still calculating VAT returns manually and then giving us a shoebox at the end of the year will need to convert as soon as possible.

If you are unsure about what you need to do give us a call and we will point you in the right direction.

There is more detail on Making Tax Digital here from the Tax Institute. https://www.tax.org.uk/policy-technical/technical-news/making-tax-digital-vat-main-issues-consideration