Making Tax Digital

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Replying to Mr J Andrews:
Rob Swan
By Rob Swan
22nd Nov 2025 09:40
Sunk Cost and red faces. It seems those are the only hurdles which need to be overcome before MTD is scrapped, although I do think (expect) 'technical difficulties' will finish it off some time in the period 2026-2028.

I do question whether Labour has already been infiltrated by Russian/Chinese agents given their policies to stagnate the economy...the self employed can complete 5 tax returns instead of one and pay through the nose in terms of both cost/time....for zero benefit. That is going to help business motor forward. The Madness of Murray.

Susanna Reid/Ed Balls seemingly still not on their radar.

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Every journalist worth their salt should ask MPs mentioning 'cutting red tape' ,'but what about MTD4IT?'.....Tory on TV this morning spouting 'we''ll cut red tape'...your party dreamt it up....missed opportunity....come on Ed/Susanna raise your game.

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Opportunity missed on Politics Live yesterday..Labour MP declaring they are cutting red tape...where was the MTD4IT repost?

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Has anyone interrogated MP Murray about his interrogation techniques?

In a 15 January 2025 Treasury Committee session, tax minister James Murray told MPs that he paused before backing the April 2026 timetable for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, but has ‘interrogated’ the plans and is now confident they can be met. More generally he promised a more ‘hands on’ approach to leading HMRC than that of his recent predecessors.

Penalty soft landing
Let’s start with that big news – HMRC have confirmed that there will be no late submission penalties for quarterly updates during tax year 2026-27. This means that the first wave of taxpayers joining MTD in April 2026 won’t need to worry about being late with their quarterly updates, at least in their first year.


By memyself-eye
26th Nov 2025 18:03
This nonsense gets more bizarre by the day.
HMRC are setting out 'rules' for income as low as £1,000?
While Turkish barber shops are flouting every aspect of compliance (joke!) free from the risk of sanctions, the tax authority is micromanaging rules for every one else.

Thank god I'm retired!


By jan kool
26th Nov 2025 18:25
If I were a sole trader without an accountant, I’d be ignoring MTD for now.

Next year the whole thing could be scrapped if HMRC runs into major software or support issues.

And if there’s a General Election, Reform may either win or have enough influence for MTD — and IR35 — to be abolished.



By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
26th Nov 2025 18:32
Effectively the pilot is extended 12 months.

And we wait and see if there is actually a "new style" tax return avaiable in April 2027 or, as I suspect that isnt working either (that is 1000 times harder than the quarterly reporting which still aint working properly) and just file a normal return.

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My advice to MP Murray would be to scrap MTD4IT (what is sensible for the big boys is also sensible for the little people) and concentrate on improving HMRC's customer services viz answer post within a calendar month, answer phones within one minute without shite recorded messages etc. If the £2 billion wasted on MTD had been allocated there in the first place we might now be closer to the world class tax system Old MacDonald crowed about.

Once the above building blocks are in place then move on.

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By North East Accountant
27th Nov 2025 08:36
Ethically we still have to do things right so the deadline is the deadline, if we are instructed to act for QU's.

However, HMRC has just made the whole thing more likely to fail as now we also ethically have to say btw there are no penalties for late submission.

So a pragmatic approach a client may decide is to instruct us only to register them for MTD and they will do QU themselves.

Then they'll quite happily ignore the QU (no consequences at all so why bother) and bring us the usual stuff in April 2027 so we can do the year end and at same time file 4xQU's.

This makes April to August 2027 a nightmare, with all the others joining MTD too.

Of course, by then hardly any QU may have been done, and there may be a further delay/softening or HMRC thinking well we'll get E-Invoicing in 2029 so let's just have all that data instead.

And the unrepresented won't even register for MTD in the main, and will definitely leave it until April 2027...if not January 2028.

HMRC.....this creates a shambles...and why am I not surprised.

PS - I'm not at all happy with you HMRC. Next year my daughter finishes 6th form so we delayed a mega non school holiday until 2027 because of MTD......now you're messing up 2027 too......argh!!!

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By Rob Swan
27th Nov 2025 09:54
Sounds to me as though HMRC are acknowledging all is not well in the land of MTD and might be letting it down slowly, given that straight up 'abandoning' MTD would raise too many questions and cause too much embarrassment - for HMRC.

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My advice to MP Murray would be to scrap MTD4IT (what is sensible for the big boys is also sensible for the little people) and concentrate on improving HMRC's customer services viz answer post within a calendar month, answer phones within one minute without shite recorded messages etc. If the £2 billion wasted on MTD had been allocated there in the first place we might now be closer to the world class tax system Old MacDonald crowed about.

Once the above building blocks are in place then move on.

I'm on the same page as Gerry Robinson who reviewed the NHS nearly 20 years ago and concluded:

I think what the NHS needs to learn is that actually you don’t solve problems by throwing money at it, and not every problem actually needs money to solve it. That’s the first lesson. Secondly, to get out of their heads the idea that things have to take three years to do and get into the idea that there is a series of objectives that we need to do now, and that we’ve got months, not years to do it. Those two things, I think, would have the biggest single impact on the way that the Health Service is managed.

Did they listen?...will MP Murray listen?

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The wonderful Craig Ogilvie, Director of MTD at HMRC visited FreeAgent HQ earlier this week to chat …

Some posts don't age very well. He is not wonderful...he is a very naughty boy....and no saint (for people of advanced years).

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By Tornado
28th Nov 2025 00:18
More than 850,000 landlords and sole traders will be joining MTD next year

There are a lot of interesting arguments and discussions in this thread, but the Elephant in the Room still is that some £864,000 + people have got to make the decision to register for MTD in April themselves although at the moment it seems that mere 5,000 people have registered already and only 3,000 of them are actually making quarterly submissions.

How can anyone, let alone experienced Accountants and similar Professionals, really believe this is going to happen.

There are still a few people praising MTD, but they are a tiny minority or have vested interests.

We are talking about facts here. There is no appetite for this bizarre additional tax system in the profession, and there are still countless people who do not even know anything about it or what they will be expected to do, and at the moment with a Government in crisis mucking up their lives, they probably don't care either.

The Government were supposed to be cutting Red Tape for business, which turns out to be another lie, so good luck to them with MTD, they will be on their own with this (perhaps literally).