UK MTD for VAT go ahead; delay on extension to other taxes

The UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, confirmed in his Spring Statement that Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT will still go ahead on 1 April 2019 in the event of a no-deal Brexit on 29 March. There has been some public debate in the media about the ability of HMRC to manage both major changes to the UK VAT regime.

However, he also stated that the plan to extend MTD to income and corporation taxes in 2020 will now be delayed. 

MTD for VAT requires most 1.2million VAT registered businesses above the £85,000 VAT registration threshold to use HMRC’s new API-platform for filing VAT returns. From 2020, this will include no manual intervention of the recording, compilation and submission of VAT data. However, for April 2019, this will be limited to just having to complete the last step of the process, filing digitally. In practise, this means mandated businesses must use API-enabled accounting software, or API Excel bridging software to transmit the 9-box VAT return data to HRMC’s online portal. There will be no online keying in of data.