Making Tax Digital timeline

As many readers of our newsletter will be aware, HMRC is moving forwards with their digitisation of taxpayer VAT and Income Tax reporting requirements under their much publicised Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative. We have reproduced below recent announcements made by HMRC on this issue.

Mandatory filing of VAT returns using MTD compliant software will commence for all returns submitted after 1 April 2019. This will apply to VAT registered traders with turnover in excess of the present VAT registration limit of £85,000.

Traders in the following list can apply for a six month deferral, to October 2019 from this requirement. Those eligible for the deferral are:

• trusts,
• ‘not for profit’ organisations that are not set up as a company,
• VAT divisions,
• VAT groups,
• those public sector entities required to provide additional information on their VAT return (Government departments, NHS Trusts),
• local authorities,
• public corporations,
• traders based overseas,
• those required to make payments on account and
• annual accounting scheme users.

Finally, a reminder that the MTD process will not be rolled-out to other taxes (Income Tax and Corporation Tax for example) until April 2020 at the earliest.