Reasons for MTD for VAT non-compliance

It seemed such a good idea at the time. Well it did to HMRC at any rate. Making tax digital – we live in a digital age everyone does everything electronically it should be a breeze to put tax on a digital setting with businesses having to report information four times a year electronically. The rest is history and eventually after much debate HMRC was forced to climb down from the goal of mandating digitalisation for all businesses with a turnover of more than £10 000 from April 2018 (how time flies). Instead it decided to require all VAT-registered businesses to operate digitally from April 2019.

How successful has this been?

According to HMRC more than 80% of businesses required to keep digital VAT records and send returns using MTD compatible software are doing so. However by March 2020 the department was aware...