Making tax digital

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PurpleMoonlight

Original Poster:

22,362 posts

156 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
Anyone looked into the software yet?

I had an online demo of one today. All it did was to pull the total figures from cells on an excel spreadsheet and populate the VAT return. Is this correct? There was no requirement to file any details of the individual transactions making the totals.


plasticpig

12,932 posts

224 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
That is correct. At the moment that is all it needs to do.

PurpleMoonlight

Original Poster:

22,362 posts

156 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
Okay ta.

No wonder it's costing business £37m.

I will be doing exactly the same work, but will be incurring a fee of £210 pa thanks to HMRC.

mad

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
Wedge.
Thin
Of
The
End
The

Arrange the above words in the correct order.

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
PurpleMoonlight said:
Okay ta.

No wonder it's costing business £37m.

I will be doing exactly the same work, but will be incurring a fee of £210 pa thanks to HMRC.

mad
As an aside, have you got the name of the software supplier?

PurpleMoonlight

Original Poster:

22,362 posts

156 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
Yes I know Eric.

Time I retired.

tongue out

PurpleMoonlight

Original Poster:

22,362 posts

156 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
Eric Mc said:
As an aside, have you got the name of the software supplier?
It was Liquid.

It's free for one VAT entity, but I guess like you I have clients VAT returns to file too so a fee is incurred. I'm not sure I want to have to upload the data to someone else to file though. I would rather have the programme on my computer.

I had a quick look at KashFlow but didn't like it.

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Tuesday 11th September 2018
quotequote all
Many thanks.

Wherever possible, I encourage my clients to submit their own returns so it might be worthwhile having a look at Liquid.

V8RAW

67 posts

67 months

Thursday 13th September 2018
quotequote all
I use xero.com accounting software and it automatically calculates your vat. Press a button to send it to HMRC when ready. Job done. Just never, ever forget to pay HMRC their money !!

PurpleMoonlight

Original Poster:

22,362 posts

156 months

Thursday 13th September 2018
quotequote all
I just want a VAT filer though, not all the other bells and whistles.

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Thursday 13th September 2018
quotequote all
I presume you check that it is calculating everything correctly for you. Software is not always smart enough to understand all the ins and outs and permutations associated with VAT.

Does it know the difference between Zero Rates, Exempt and Outside the Scope transactions?

Does it know how to handle Input VAT claims in such circumstances?

Eric Mc

121,779 posts

264 months

Thursday 13th September 2018
quotequote all
MTD for VAT now coming under House of Lords scrutiny -

https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/comm...

Piersman2

6,596 posts

198 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
Has anyone found some kind of shareware application that can be used to sumit VAT returns from April next year?

My accountant currently does everything for me except the quarterly VAT returns which I calculate from my Excel spreadsheet that tracks and records and details all my bank account transactions.

I'm flat rate, usually submit nothing but invoices either monthly/weekly with 20% VAT, and then forward on the summarised %16.5 VAT each quarter via the existing VAT submit return form online. Not exactly rocket science.

My accountants have just informed me that I will need to use software to do this from April as the online form will not be available as it is just now.

Well, to be honest, it deeply irks me to be compulsory forced to spend money on software for HMRC just so I can forward on all their VAT, it's not like we're even making anything from it as we used to under the previous flat rate rates. The cost of this is coming directly out of my company profits, I'm actually having to pay to collect and forward HMRC their VAT.

Given that I have to spend maybe an hour or two sorting the VAT every quarter, I don't mind the effort of filling in some numbers on a different piece of software than the online screen, but to have to pay for a software package that I don't want and won't use for anything more complex than this seems just 'wrong'. So, is there a freeware/shareware app that I can use instead?

Dan_M5

615 posts

142 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
Piersman2 said:
Has anyone found some kind of shareware application that can be used to sumit VAT returns from April next year?

My accountant currently does everything for me except the quarterly VAT returns which I calculate from my Excel spreadsheet that tracks and records and details all my bank account transactions.

I'm flat rate, usually submit nothing but invoices either monthly/weekly with 20% VAT, and then forward on the summarised %16.5 VAT each quarter via the existing VAT submit return form online. Not exactly rocket science.

My accountants have just informed me that I will need to use software to do this from April as the online form will not be available as it is just now.

Well, to be honest, it deeply irks me to be compulsory forced to spend money on software for HMRC just so I can forward on all their VAT, it's not like we're even making anything from it as we used to under the previous flat rate rates. The cost of this is coming directly out of my company profits, I'm actually having to pay to collect and forward HMRC their VAT.

Given that I have to spend maybe an hour or two sorting the VAT every quarter, I don't mind the effort of filling in some numbers on a different piece of software than the online screen, but to have to pay for a software package that I don't want and won't use for anything more complex than this seems just 'wrong'. So, is there a freeware/shareware app that I can use instead?
I use Quickbooks and they will be MTD compliant for VAT. If you have decent software for invoicing, payroll etc it should be available on that. If not change

PurpleMoonlight

Original Poster:

22,362 posts

156 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
This is the simplest I have found so far.

https://www.absoluteexcelvatfiler.co.uk/pages/abso...

Piersman2

6,596 posts

198 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
Dan_M5 said:
I use Quickbooks and they will be MTD compliant for VAT. If you have decent software for invoicing, payroll etc it should be available on that. If not change
I don't use ANY accountancy software at the moment, I track my VAT payments on Excel and summarise each quarter for manual submission to the online VAT return form. My accountant does all my payroll and yearly books , and recently most clients have used self-billing so even preparing my own invoices has been redundant for several years.

The only thing I need is a bit of software that can take my VAT specific transations (detailed or summarised) and submit them from April next year rather than me having to logon to the gov.uk website and manually updating the form myself.

Piersman2

6,596 posts

198 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
PurpleMoonlight said:
This is the simplest I have found so far.

https://www.absoluteexcelvatfiler.co.uk/pages/abso...
Thanks for that, that's looking like the kind of thing, an interface between excel and HMRC MTD submission. That seems to be £48 - but only for 13 months.

LeighW

4,360 posts

187 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
Piersman2 said:
PurpleMoonlight said:
This is the simplest I have found so far.

https://www.absoluteexcelvatfiler.co.uk/pages/abso...
Thanks for that, that's looking like the kind of thing, an interface between excel and HMRC MTD submission. That seems to be £48 - but only for 13 months.
This is apparently free for a single user:

http://liquidaccounts.com/liquid-vat-filer/

PurpleMoonlight

Original Poster:

22,362 posts

156 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
Piersman2 said:
Thanks for that, that's looking like the kind of thing, an interface between excel and HMRC MTD submission. That seems to be £48 - but only for 13 months.
Yes, you will have to pay it annually.

The free Liquid one does something similar, but I doubt it will remain free for long.

Piersman2

6,596 posts

198 months

Monday 5th November 2018
quotequote all
LeighW said:
This is apparently free for a single user:

http://liquidaccounts.com/liquid-vat-filer/
Thanks again, this one does say it's free for 1 user so there do seem to be some sensible options coming along. There's still 6 months to go so maybe it's still early days for every type of user to yet be catered for. I'm sure there'll be a suitably simple application available before April! laugh