This week's opinion

Neil Warren’s article ‘Digital winds’ on page 12 is a timely reminder that Making Tax Digital will soon be a reality. Many people have called for a further delay but this now seems unlikely and we all need to prepare ourselves and our clients for the changes. My experience from talking to practitioners is that many clients have not even begun to think about what MTD will mean for them. Time is not on their side.

As MTD becomes a reality it is essential that HMRC’s communications about what the new regime will mean in practice are clear and unambiguous so that everybody knows what they have to do and when. As Neil points out towards the end of his article HMRC made a fundamental error in the recent VAT notice about which businesses are within the scope of MTD for VAT. That has now been...