With less than six months to go until it becomes mandatory to file VAT returns in accordance with HMRC’s Making Tax Digital (MTD), we are now making final preparations and helping the last of our clients to become ‘MTD-for-VAT’ ready.

From April-2019, VAT registered businesses with a turnover exceeding the VAT registration threshold (currently £85,000) will be forced to use MTD compliant software and will no longer be able to file VAT returns via the HMRC website.

We have already helped many of our clients move away from keeping records on paper, Excel or non-MTD compliant software and to SageOne, Xero, Quickbooks or KashFlow; all of which are MTD ready. We have done so with an eye to the future, as it is still expected that income tax returns will be required quarterly, rather annually, in the future and possibly from as early as April-2020.

If you are not MTD ready, we recommend that you take action now. There are costs involved in making the change but these are relatively insignificant in comparison to the fines that HMRC can issue for non-compliance.