This week's opinion

The announcement of the general election has put yet more pressure on the Making Tax Digital timetable. At the time of writing it is not clear whether the clauses in the Finance Bill putting MTD on a legal footing will survive the ‘wash-up’ process. Further given the fact that the leader of the opposition has called for the scrapping of quarterly reporting I am not sure of the propriety of HMRC continuing with the MTD pilot during an election period. It can though probably be justified on the basis that it is testing technology and systems.

However we are about to enter another period of purdah. Readers will recall that during the EU referendum campaign the long-awaited consultative documents on MTD had to be postponed. We are due another set on MTD for large and complex businesses. These were promised for the spring...