Before I start, I will apologise, this really is a first world moan but…most people on here won’t be effected in any way by this but some will, and hopefully appreciate where I’m coming from. MTD, Making Tax Digital, basically means for business’ big and small you have to produce your accounts online for the HMRC to have access to at anytime ( is my understanding ). For years I’ve been producing my “accounts” via Excel to my accountants for them to sort out every quarter. Now I have to pay another couple of hundred quid a year for a piece of software to replicate this. The likes of Sage etc must have some very skilled parliamentary lobbyists to push this one through. What with the flat rate VAT scheme all but disappearing, and dividend tax, etc etc, small business’s are really being pushed to the wire.

Once again sorry. I know there are bigger stories today, but a problem shared is a problem? ….beats me.

I sympathise entirely. This is to help the govt, not citizens. What’s wrong with free access software? I do a self assessment online every year at no cost so why can’t you submit .CSV files?

Its crap, bit like RTI for payroll.  All the admin gets pushed to the businesses and s/w businesses make a killing providing poor / expensive s/w to do things the government should do.

I wouldn’t want to be a sys admin responsible for a system that sucked in thousands of CSV files from the general public (I actually do work on some government systems that either do forms-based entry or ingest files, the latter are generally much more of a pain and require more front-end checking) and the users of those are from other government departments rather than joe public.

I have no clue what system you’re talking about but there’s benefits to having people use an app front-end/forms to enter data rather than send in files and have to process those. Of course if it’s mandatory it needs to be zero or minimal cost for the user which might not be the case here.

Yep its a major pain in the backside.

For RTI they (the govt) did create some free software that would allow you to submit payroll data electronically without having to pay for commercial software,it was terrible,but it did work, just about.

I haven’t looked at this mtd stuff yet, hopefully my accountant has it covered….but is there no free software option from the govt for this?

This is to help the govt, not citizens.

Efficiencies for Government / HMRC (that either reduce their costs or help spot/prevent fiddling) should be beneficial to society in general.

There are some people providing “excel bridging” products, but not sure either how helpful they are or how the costs compare (PWC have an offering that is from £67 a year).  I’d always be a wee bit cynical if my accountant was insisting I “need” to buy some software because they usually get a kickback from the likes of Sage.

Now the question you might ask after installing and using a proper accounts package – is why am I paying my accountant to “sort stuff out”…  you can probably save the cost of the package yourself by reducing their workload.

another reason to stay under the VAT limit.

For business under the VAT threshold which by the end of brexit will be every single **** company in the UK 😀

it’s not a requirement

All these things make starting a business much more difficult, more and more we are becoming the administration and tax collector’s for Gov.

Its a serious issue as it drives “cash in hand” off the books business and penalises legitimate business.

The reduction in benefit from investing your capital (the dividend allowance is now pointless) in creating and running your own business has become worthless.

There is no way i would risk my capital in a new venture, if you risk your house, family security you need a significant benefit down the line. If you create jobs and wealth you need to get some benefit for that investment  – currently their is cery little.

We had to buy a non apple laptop, then excel, then VT transaction, then 3 days so far at the accountants trying to learn how it works.

So far over a grand wasted . No doubt the government can **** it up so that we have to spend even more.

Wave accounting is a free online platform that can do this. I’ve used it for years and my accountant can access it to produce my end of year accounts. It also saves a lot of time compared with manually filling out a spreadsheet.

Thanks @myti, I’ll have a look at Wave.

zippykona – you could have just run a VM of windows on your mac – many people do that

You have my sympathies, It’s bad enough doing my tax return for a poxy rental house! (It’s not a ‘poxy’ house but in the grand scheme of things….you know what I mean)