Making Tax Digital

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If my memory is correct there was a Mccallum who played the invisible man. Giles may hope he can call on such powers if ever faced with the rabid accountingweb responders. I'd prefer Jim Harra ensured post submitted to HMRC in March (still waiting) got answered than waste his and our time on this nonsense.

https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tax/hmrc-policy/hmrcs-giles-mccallum-on-the-purpose-of-mtd?page=1&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=AWUKPOTW201021&utm_content=AWUKPOTW201021%20CID_3551bbb020ecf678739a24cfb3ff6c7b&utm_source=internal_cm&utm_term=Read%20more

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And just to support my post yesterday, the letter I submitted to HMRC on 8 March, chased on 19 August, was told would be dealt with in the next 8 weeks remains unanswered.

Mr Harra do you really think you should be swanning around to conferences when the service your department is supposed to provide is in meltdown.

And just to stick the boot in again, I've not bothered chasing a 2nd letter submitted on the same day as I've been advised that particular department works to a 259 calendar year delay in responding to post.

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Okay I exaggerated .....259 calendar days (not years ).

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1st 8 March letter answer received today.

2nd 8 March letter reply still outstanding.

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I received an email from my professional body today which mentioned tax simplification having read the following a few days before:

Under MTD quarterly reporting you have to complete 16 returns, each of which generates a potential penalty if you miss it. Each obligation has a separate bucket of potential points for generating penalties.

Therefore, Aplin explained, the opportunity to make a mistake and therefore incur a penalty increases massively once MTD for ITSA comes in.

You couldn't make it up and the plot would be rejected as unbelievable even if it had been devised by Baldrick for a Blackadder episode. I'm still waiting for the HMRC officials who ignored just about every consultation warning about the implementation of NRCGT (with the obvious and predicted resulting chaos) to be court marshalled, but it looks as though they must have been promoted to run the implementation of MTD for IT.

At least there are some like-minded individuals out there...an example below:

Ensure at a minimum some low quality data is filed to HMRC by at least 30th April 2024, the earliest possible penalty date - assuming of course these are not suspended as would normally happen in the first year of implementation. This might be via a number of methods. But my guess is by that point HMRC will be under huge pressure to abandon the project once it becomes public knowledge of how stupid this is and we might well even have a new government by then looking to win over small businesses and landlords rather than brutally punish them and bury them in red tape.

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There are others out there still waiting for post submitted to HMRC in March 2021 to be answered-see post below taken from accountingweb

"'''it can slow up the roll-out of new processes". In a similar way that I have letters and Forms that I have sent to HMRC from March - May 2021, none of which have so far been replied to? Harra should not have been let off so lightly; his answers should have been challenged. Talk is cheap.

Does Mr Harra have a plan to clear this backlog or is this just going to be permitted to snowball on into eternity?

I spent too long this morning initiating a complaint about my 8 March letter not being responded to. Half an hour on the phone to a lady who insisted I provide an accounts reference number for an employer....I told her I only dealt with the employee and it was HMRC's automated answering service that had mis-directed me to her. She couldn't escalate my complaint because I couldn't get past her employer security, nor could she pass me to the correct section = go back to that automative answering service and take pot luck again.

How Harra has the time to swan around introducing a new tax system when his department are in such complete disarray is beyond me.

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More negative comment for HMRC/Mr Harra. I think I have a greater affinity to accountingweb responders.

client owed £17000 Vat refunds since July 2021 and no reply to recorded delivery letter.
Instead of [***] footing around he should start to get out on the ground and see the issues people have with HMRC. This really is a disgrace.

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They are even composing songs on accountingweb:

Altogether now.
Why why why Jim Harra
Why why why Jim Harra
I could see MTD was no good for me.
But was lost like a slave that no man could free.

And pointing out the nightmare that is being brewing:

This is the big worry as filings then become:

Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Amended Q1
Amended Q2
Amended Q3
Amended Q4
EOPS
Final Declaration

So your sole trader goes from 1 submission per annum to 10.
If he has property income as well its 1 to 19 submissions.

Just look to the new CGT Land Property Return for HMRC thinking....

And passing comment:

You have to smile at the absurdity of it all.

And coming up with a solution:

Exterminate, Exterminate.

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A Freedom of Information request (nice to know this mob do actually release some information and do not hide all unwelcome statistics from the public) has detailed that only 9 participants are still testing HMRC's MTD pilot. Here is an accountingweb reader response:

If it wasn't so catastrophically frightening it would be side-splittingly funny.

So the same HMRC which, over the last 5 years, has been getting slower & later in releasing technical information required by software developers (because they've no concept of the specification/development/testing/documentation cycle) ... is now finding, when things like SEISS jump out of the woodwork, that they can't cope with it.

And this is 'things' that they knew more about than commercial developers or agents or taxpayers - who are all expected to turn on a sixpence and move on.

The aspect of MTD that seems to have escaped the Treasury planners is that it is built not so much on digitalisation but on integration (which is the old-fashioned word for APIs).
So, irrespective of what software developers achieve OR of what data is entered by taxpayers OR what agents manage to correct/adjust in those figures ... the whole system grinds to a halt if the HMRC components don't work.

And unlike one-way 'integration' (such as RTI) where c0ckups at HMRC's end can be hidden (or even denied), in the two-way world of APIs there's nowhere to hide!

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Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report on HMRC’s performance in 2020/21, and it’s not happy reading for HMRC or the Treasury.

Conclusions and recommendations
The report contained eight conclusions and recommendations.

HMRC needs to take a number of actions to reassure Parliament and the public that it is serious about tackling error and fraud from the COVID-19 support schemes.
HMRC does not understand the reasons for the growth in the cost of R&D tax reliefs including how much is due to abuse which has grown by 240% over the last four years.
HMRC does not have a convincing plan for restoring compliance activity back to pre-pandemic levels.
Resource constraints are limiting HMRC’s ability to get the optimum level of compliance yield.
It is too easy for taxpayers to be unwittingly lured into tax avoidance schemes.
Yet again customer service has collapsed and HMRC’s recovery plans are not clear.
The benefits of Making Tax Digital to those with simple tax affairs are not clear.
Changed working practices have left HMRC with more office space than it needs.

By Tornado
11th Feb 2022 16:07
You have supplied the detail (thank you for that) but I can provide the summary -

HMRC are incompetent and not fit for purpose