MTD day arrives: has it been simple, straight forward, and effortless for you?

By James Nadal | 1st April 2019 | 2 min read

MTD day arrives: has it been simple, straight forward, and effortless for you?

Finally, we’re here. After all the discussions, debates and delays, Making Tax Digital for VAT officially takes effect today.

As the HMRC reforms go live, are you and your practice completely ready?

It’s been a long time coming, having been first announced in Spring 2015 by then Chancellor George Osborne. Now, around four years later, VAT filings and records must be carried out and kept digitally through specialised APIs, as of today.

IRIS has the most comprehensive MTD solution out there for you. Have you seen KashFlow, which offers the easiest way to comply with MTD? Our bookkeeping software allows for digital records to be maintained and values to be submitted directly to HMRC.

If that’s not your preferred way to do things, have you looked at the new IRIS VAT Filer? It automatically connects to HMRC and retrieves client data such as previous submissions made under MTD, current VAT obligations, liabilities due and payments already made. Overall, it makes it much easier for you to keep track of your clients’ submissions, payments and any amounts outstanding.

At IRIS, we’ve been busy getting ready for some while. You might recall that the first quarterly filing submission in the MTD programme was carried out using IRIS Personal Tax. It was completed by IRIS customer Rowleys Chartered Accountants in February 2018. We were also one of the first vendors supporting agents with digital submissions.

Hundreds of accountants have come to our events over the last year - our five steps to MTD success training seminars and our MTD roadshows. We’ve been very happy to have helped so many to learn more about the requirements.

If you missed out and are still seeking guidance during HMRC’s initial ‘soft landing’ phase, we’ve got a host of resources for you to look through at your leisure from the comfort of your home. These include our 5 steps webinars and blogs, which offer practical steps you need to take, if you haven’t already.

Perhaps you want to reflect on the actions you’ve taken so far and think about whether you may have missed any opportunities afforded by MTD. If so, watching our five steps webinars will give you plenty of food for thought. And there’s further help for you in the form of our MTD guide – dedicated entirely to the subject.

So, if MTD day has arrived quicker than you’d hoped and you’re still feeling a little lacking in confidence, then we have lots of support and guidance on offer for you.

Important to note as well is that we have included a range of MTD enhancements in our new Spring release, which is out later this week. We’ll be detailing these in another article on Thursday, so watch this space.

So, if your MTD compliance is not going as smoothly as planned, then come and speak to us and we’ll make it simple, straight forward, and effortless. E-mail us today at MTD@iris.co.uk.