Making Tax Digital
Discussion
Love your attitude Eric - you really 'get' busy small business owners v job creation schemes for bureaucrats justifying their pensions via always coming up with more stuff!.
Do you know I AM that macro that can port numbers from a few Excel cells to the online VAT submission boxes
. Been doing it for years! Happy to help anyone port numbers over via my pay forever model of 14.5p a month! However the cost will go up annually by inflation + 12%. Sorry about that - but once you are in my system you are mine to milk 
>apols - bit extra cynical today <
Do you know I AM that macro that can port numbers from a few Excel cells to the online VAT submission boxes
. Been doing it for years! Happy to help anyone port numbers over via my pay forever model of 14.5p a month! However the cost will go up annually by inflation + 12%. Sorry about that - but once you are in my system you are mine to milk >apols - bit extra cynical today
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plasticpig said:
jammy-git said:
Exactly this. I think what Eric has been told is that it is not/won't be possible to upload an Excel spreadsheet as your submission. However I can't see why HMRC would not accept an Excel VBA macro reading the contents of certain cells on a spreadsheet and then being posted via their API using that VBA macro.
I personally wouldn't do the whole lot in VBA. The API uses OAuth2 for authentication. That means either relying on the machine having IE 11 installed and using COM or using the Selenium VBA wrapper (might be other solutions as well but those are the two I am aware of). Eric Mc said:
Problem solved. Tell that to Mr Patel in the curry shop down the road.
The last curry shop I ordered from had online ordering and sent text notifications when the food was dispatched with an estimated delivery time. Then another text when the driver was a couple a minutes away from arriving. I suspect their accounting system does not consist of a Simplex accounts book.plasticpig said:
The last curry shop I ordered from had online ordering and sent text notifications when the food was dispatched with an estimated delivery time. Then another text when the driver was a couple a minutes away from arriving. I suspect their accounting system does not consist of a Simplex accounts book.
You might be surprised at what types of records small businesses keep. I'm not. And I see hundreds.plasticpig said:
The last curry shop I ordered from had online ordering and sent text notifications when the food was dispatched with an estimated delivery time. Then another text when the driver was a couple a minutes away from arriving.
They probably do that for their own benefit, not that of HMRC.Rovinghawk said:
plasticpig said:
The last curry shop I ordered from had online ordering and sent text notifications when the food was dispatched with an estimated delivery time. Then another text when the driver was a couple a minutes away from arriving.
They probably do that for their own benefit, not that of HMRC.
Why are HMRC making this so complicated? I can understand why they want tax returns submitted digitally - less tax office staff needed, so cheaper - but why the need for a specific piece of software to do this?
I'm guessing they want to make it harder for businesses (and eventually individual tax payers) to massage their books by having the ability to see the raw data as it is entered at source?
Taken to it's logical conclusion, this will remove the need for book keepers, accountants and other tax advisors. Everything entered in real time, state controlled software decides what tax is payable with no human intervention.
I'm a part time sole trader. All my records are on paper - copies of receipts and invoices kept in 2 piles, transferred into a ledger in April, then a paper tax return in September once I have my P60s and bank statements. Takes me a couple of hours a year, zero cost except for a postage stamp. 100% secure, no risk of IT problems. Cheap and easy for me, but needs someone at HMRC to process my return.
I'm guessing they want to make it harder for businesses (and eventually individual tax payers) to massage their books by having the ability to see the raw data as it is entered at source?
Taken to it's logical conclusion, this will remove the need for book keepers, accountants and other tax advisors. Everything entered in real time, state controlled software decides what tax is payable with no human intervention.
I'm a part time sole trader. All my records are on paper - copies of receipts and invoices kept in 2 piles, transferred into a ledger in April, then a paper tax return in September once I have my P60s and bank statements. Takes me a couple of hours a year, zero cost except for a postage stamp. 100% secure, no risk of IT problems. Cheap and easy for me, but needs someone at HMRC to process my return.
The problem is that HMRC are not accountants or businesses and do not properly understand accounts and what accounts are for in a business. They work on the assumption that accounts are purely there for the provision of profit or loss figures for the benefit of HMRC. If HMRC becomes the sole arbiter of what accounts need to look like and the manner in which they are put together and submitted to them, many (if not most) businesses would not survive.
They need to be reined in - but sadly they won't because there are too many outside entities hoping to make lots of dosh out of these new ways of doing things.
They need to be reined in - but sadly they won't because there are too many outside entities hoping to make lots of dosh out of these new ways of doing things.
clockworks said:
I'm a part time sole trader. All my records are on paper - copies of receipts and invoices kept in 2 piles, transferred into a ledger in April, then a paper tax return in September once I have my P60s and bank statements. Takes me a couple of hours a year, zero cost except for a postage stamp. 100% secure, no risk of IT problems. Cheap and easy for me, but needs someone at HMRC to process my return.
What do you do in the event of loss, fire, etc?jammy-git said:
What do you do in the event of loss, fire, etc?
If my house burns down I'll have bigger things to worry about than losing a pile of paperwork. Tax bill is only a few hundred quid.Worst case I can get electronic copies of all the invoices from the supplier, and see my receipts on internet banking
clockworks said:
jammy-git said:
What do you do in the event of loss, fire, etc?
If my house burns down I'll have bigger things to worry about than losing a pile of paperwork. Tax bill is only a few hundred quid.Worst case I can get electronic copies of all the invoices from the supplier, and see my receipts on internet banking
Over my 40 plus years of looking after clients (thousands of them) only once did a client lose paperwork to a fire - and that was probably a deliberate ploy by the client as he was under a tax investigation. It was a long time ago and the client is long since dead.
Keeping digital records is a completely separate (and much simpler) issue than getting compliant with HMRC's Making Tax Digital rules.
Eric Mc said:
Don't worry - it'll all be coming your way before too long.
Already file VAT electronically. TBH it's the original proposals that were more of a worry -- implied that you'd have to have your accounts made up every quarter rather than annually. Hopefully it won't come to that as the paperwork is onerous already.
carl_w said:
Already file VAT electronically.
TBH it's the original proposals that were more of a worry -- implied that you'd have to have your accounts made up every quarter rather than annually. Hopefully it won't come to that as the paperwork is onerous already.
To be fair, the current MTD for VAT is not too onerous. It's what's coming along behind it that is more worrying.TBH it's the original proposals that were more of a worry -- implied that you'd have to have your accounts made up every quarter rather than annually. Hopefully it won't come to that as the paperwork is onerous already.
Eric Mc said:
carl_w said:
Already file VAT electronically.
TBH it's the original proposals that were more of a worry -- implied that you'd have to have your accounts made up every quarter rather than annually. Hopefully it won't come to that as the paperwork is onerous already.
To be fair, the current MTD for VAT is not too onerous. It's what's coming along behind it that is more worrying.TBH it's the original proposals that were more of a worry -- implied that you'd have to have your accounts made up every quarter rather than annually. Hopefully it won't come to that as the paperwork is onerous already.
markcoznottz said:
Given the staffing shortages, you would guess that they want to use that super duper computer system to try and spot shortfalls in tax.
One of the driving forces behind the supplemental data HMRC are proposing to collect is so they don't have to do so many VAT inspections. For instance if they can tell why the input VAT exceeds the output VAT for several VAT returns in a row from the supplemental data provided then they may not carry out a VAT inspection. Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff