Ministers have confirmed a new timetable for Making Tax Digital as they set out the next steps for the Finance Bill.
The government has listened to concerns raised by parliamentarians, in particular the Treasury Select Committee, businesses and professional bodies about the pace of change and is taking steps to ensure a smooth transition to a digital tax system.
The implementation of Making Tax Digital has been revised to ensure businesses have plenty of time to adapt to the changes.
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 and they will only need to do so from April 2019 The anticipated timescale for companies has not changed and all corporates will be making quarterly submissions from April 2020.Making Tax Digital will be available on a voluntary basis for the smallest businesses, and for other taxes. This means that businesses and landlords with a turnover below the VAT threshold will be able to choose when to move to the new digital system.
As VAT already requires quarterly returns, no business will need to provide information to HMRC more regularly during this initial phase than they do now.All businesses and landlords will have at least two years to adapt to the changes before being asked to keep digital records for other taxes.
HMRC are fully committed to supporting businesses in this transition. HMRC has already begun piloting the Making Tax Digital services and will continue to do so, testing the system extensively with businesses. It will start to pilot MTD for VAT by the end of this year, starting with small-scale, private testing, followed by a wider, live pilot starting in Spring 2018. This will allow for well over a year of testing before any businesses are mandated to use the system.
The MTD policy paper has been updated to reflect current policy position and timescales.
