MTD / 4 posts found
Don’t look back!
One of the many quotes bandied around by people is: “don’t look back, you’re not going that way…” Like many clichés, this one contains a grain of truth, and never more so than when understanding the difference between financial and management accountancy. Financial accountancy is a simple record-keeping exercise that shows you a summary of what has happened in the previous year. It is used mainly by accountants to work out how much tax is due to HMRC. This process, filing your tax return and statutory accounts, and making any necessary payments, are a legal responsibility. Financial accounting is viewed [...]
Brexit may be in limbo, but Making Tax Digital is not
As we have highlighted in many posts to this blog, from 1 April 2019, ALL VAT registered businesses with turnover above the £85,000 VAT registration threshold will have to submit their VAT returns from within software that can link with HMRC’s networks. In techno- speak, your data will need to be transferred using a designated API (HMRC’s application programming interface). The fact that you have always prepared your VAT returns electronically, for example, by using a spreadsheet to record transactions and create the data for your VAT returns, will not be enough. Your spreadsheet will not have the functionality [...]
Planning or regretting?
As we have outlined in recent posts, change is upon us and come the end of March next year, the combination of Brexit and the advent of Making Tax Digital (MTD) will change much that we have taken for granted. Apart from the cross-border considerations (import VAT, customs duties and the like) MTD will require all affected businesses to link with HMRC by using approved software. The time to figure out the best strategy to survive these changes need to be considered now. Businesses should be taking time out to draw up contingency plans, and if possible, before March 2019. [...]
Spreadsheets and VAT from April 2019
Making Tax Digital (MTD) is HMRC’s long running intention to make an electronic link with the accounting data of UK businesses. The idea is to draw in the data they need directly from your computers using links provided by your software developers for this purpose. Which is fine if you are using accounts software that will accommodate these changes. The first implementation deadline for MTD is 1 April 2019, when all businesses registered for VAT, and with turnover in excess of £85,000, will need to submit returns using HMRC’s MTD processes. Certainly, the accounts software that we use to prepare [...]