MTD Update

Following it’s removal from the Finance Bill earlier in the year, the treasury has issued guidance as to its revised plans for Making Tax Digital.

Under the original plans, businesses and landlords with turnover in excess of £10,000 would have been required to submit mandatory quarterly reports. With those who are VAT registered commencing from April 2018, and those below this from April 2019.

HM Treasury have reconsidered the timetable and reporting requirements, following on from concerns raised by professional advisors and software providers and issued new guidelines.

The new guidelines published by the HM Treasury state :

Under the new timetable:

  • only businesses with a turnover above the VAT threshold (currently £85,000) will have to keep digital records and only for VAT purposes
  • they will only need to do so from 2019
  • businesses will not be asked to keep digital records, or to update HMRC quarterly, for other taxes until at least 2020

Making Tax Digital will be available on a voluntary basis for the smallest businesses, and for other taxes.

This means that, those who are initially going to be affected will be businesses who are registered for VAT and using manual record keeping as this will no longer be acceptable from April 2019.

It is important to plan for any new systems and processes to be in place long before this deadline to ensure that businesses are fully compliant.

EQ will continue to offer our clients proactive advice to ensure that all requirements of MTD legislation will be satisfied by our clients.

Should you have any queries with regard to this or any aspect of your accounting records, then please contact us.