What is Making Tax Digital (MTD)?

Making Tax Digital is a key part of the government's plans to make

it easier for individuals and businesses to get their tax right and

keep on top of their affairs.  

 HMRC's ambition is to become one of the most digitally advanced tax administrations in the world.  Making Tax Digital is making fundamental changes to the way the tax system works - transforming tax administration so that it is: 

• More effective
• More efficient
• Easier for taxpayers to get their tax right. 

From April 2019, most VAT registered businesses with a turnover above £85,000 must keep their VAT records digitally and use Making Tax Digital compatible software to submit their VAT Returns. 

What is MTD Compatible Software? 

Functional compatible software is a software program, or set of software programs, products or applications, that must be able to: 

• Record and preserve digital records
• Provide to HMRC information and returns from data held in those digital records by using the API platform
• Receive information from HMRC via the API platform.  

Is my Expert Agent MTD compatible? 

Expert Agent does not hold all the information for filing in a VAT return as it only manages your client account so cannot be MTD compatible on its own.  However, it does record and preserve digital records so when used alongside other programs it is still a component of functional compatible software.  To find out which accounting software is compatible and can link to the HMRC API go to: http://www.gov.uk/guidance/software-for-sending-income-tax-updates

Are any changes being made to Expert Agent for MTD? 

Where Expert Agent is used as a component of functional compatible software there needs to be a 'digital link' between it and the software that will be communicating with HMRC via the API.  Expert Agent holds the transactional level detail for your sales invoices so all that you need to do is transfer this information via a digital link. Notice 700/22: Making tax digital for VAT, Section 3.2.1 confirms that a CSV is an acceptable digital link and you can at present, produce this CSV from Expert Agent via your Reviewing Sales Invoices/Credit Notes report.

HMRC guidelines will soon prohibit any manual intervention in the data transfer and in preparation for this, Expert Agent have introduced a new Making Tax Digital (MTD) export which you can read about here.

Super users are able to configure the financial accounting software being used which you can read about here, along with other parameters surrounding your VAT and your nominal codes that will determine the format and content of the csv file. This will ensure that the file can be imported into your financial accounting software without any manipulation of data*.

We will also be running live training sessions to help you with all of the configuration that you will need to complete and demo the report for you. The links for these sessions have been released via an alert on Thursday 19th March. If you have missed this alert, please feel free to log a support ticket to have them re-sent.

*Supported formats are Xero, QuickBooks, and Sage.