Preparing clients for the digital tax era

With the pilot for making tax digital for income tax self assessment (MTD ITSA) underway (tinyurl.com/hmrcmtdpilotsignup) it is clear that MTD is here to stay.

There is no question that our profession is now stepping into a new era of digital tax filing and while there have been some delays that have caused significant frustration for many tax professionals MTD is arguably being implemented for the right reasons. Delays in the rollout of MTD have slowed some accounting firms’ digital transition and manual administrative-based processes continue to pinch at their bottom line.

In February and March 2024 an IRIS Software Group poll of 139 UK accountants revealed that 56% of accountants still use paper-based processes to handle anti-money laundering (AML) compliance and 53% still monitor and manage workflow tasks in spreadsheets.

Further although about half of respondents consider ‘MTD as an...