Last updated on April 25, 2022

HMRC announce new timetable

HMRC has announced significant changes to the timetable for rolling out the Making Tax Digital scheme, which was due to go live from April 2018.

The scope and timetable have now been put back following feedback and concerns from parliamentary bodies, businesses, the accounting profession and software companies.

Under the revised 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 update HMRC quarterly for other taxes until at least 2020, instead of 2018 as originally proposed.
  • Small businesses will be able to file digitally on a voluntary basis for other taxes.

The thinking behind this is that VAT already requires quarterly returns so no business will need to provide information to HMRC more regularly than they do now.

MTD for VAT will go into a public beta test in spring 2018 and from April 2019 business above the VAT threshold will have to file their VAT returns with MTD-compatible software.

Lucy