Making Tax Digital

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By Mr J Andrews
15th May 2026 17:11
Will anyone in HMRC please come up with the real reason[s] why this imposition is in place. Athow's comments are just another example of indoctrinated propaganda. His article is akin to a medicinal remedy from a quack Victorian charlatan bogus doctor.

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By Open all hours
15th May 2026 09:24
Credit to Mr Athow for pitching up.
Shame he so obviously has not seriously considered anything which many hugely experienced professionals have been telling him for the past decade.


Replying to Open all hours:
By Richardrussell
15th May 2026 09:31
He's not interested in what we have to say, this is just another PR exercise.

Mike drop. Mr. Athow has left the building. Job done.


Replying to Open all hours:

By BrianL
15th May 2026 14:32
And credit to him for not using the word 'customer' once. That's the only good thing that I could see.


By 0098087
15th May 2026 09:26
There is no defence for this pointless nonsense. It will not increase digital record keeping,. It is causing more stress for taxpayers and accountants. Costs at the moment are going up for everything. I do hope when we have a new PM and Chancellor they wake up and in addition to cutting Employers NI they get rid of this nonsense.

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The software companies attempting to silence free speech:

By Rob Swan
15th May 2026 11:08
I posted but AWeb shuffled my post off to the moderator. Wonder why


Replying to Rob Swan:

By FactChecker
15th May 2026 12:10
Did you express surprise that so many comments start "With all due respect to .." - despite Athow not being worthy of any respect on the simple basis that he's shown none to the professionals whom he expects to deliver this (now admitted) tosh?

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AI:

The total forecasted cost for HMRC to implement Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax has risen to approximately £1.3 billion, a 400% increase over the original 2016 estimate, due to repeated delays.

Recent FOI request:

The MTD Programme’s overall lifecycle costs are estimated at £4.3 billion, of which £1.4
billion are public sector costs and £2.9 billion customer costs.
The £2.9 billion figure includes all current estimates of ongoing and transitional costs to
customers

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Be interesting if Laura K and Co could ask Labour's leadership candidates what their thoughts on MTD4IT are..will they know what it is?

It would be even better if Laura K and Co know their subject so they can fire back on any intent on keeping MTD4IT....get them to answer the questions Athow glossed over...even better get Athow, FactChecker and Kevin Ringer on the show to joust it out.

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One for Athow to justify (Jack Hargreaves and Bunty come into my head when I type his surname)


By Mike Aldridge
16th May 2026 19:19
Oh no! I've just prepared the 2025-26 for my dog walker client, who records daily takings from each dog owner in a handwritten notebook, AND HIS TURNOVER EXCEEDED £30,000. I've now got to explain why he's got to start MTD from 2027-28. He left his former job partly to get away from the bureaucracy of VAT returns etc and other stresses. MTD offers him NOTHING. Wish me luck!

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A further MTD4IT overspend of 0.1 of a billion (1.3 to 1.4) sounds quite small until you google it:

0.1 billion is equal to 100 million

No wonder the country is broke.

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Further evidence suggesting the software companies are becoming rattled...accountingweb now akin to the Chinese Government:

By FactChecker
17th May 2026 15:13
There's certainly some non-impartial gremlins in the works ... my extremely lengthy (even by my standards) response of yesterday to davidross's dig (near the top of this page) appeared quite happily for at least 5 minutes ... before then disappearing!

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By listerramjet
15th May 2026 10:35
As director of strategy this chap needs to get his head out of the weeds. HMRC should be driving a tax simplification strategy. Making Tax Efficient would be a much better strapline to pursue!
But if he got out more and engaged with real folk running real businesses, he might start talking more sense.

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All that the article does is describe someone else's dream and aspirations. Take for example -

Quarterly updates also enable HMRC to support people with in-year tax estimates, and through new technology like HMRC Assist we can use these in-year interactions to better support taxpayers with nudges and prompts to help people get their tax more accurate.

This is a blatant lie although Mr Athow appears to believe it. Income Tax is an Annual Tax and can only accurately be calculated when all sources of income are taken into account.

There is absolutely no benefit in being given regular updates on a tax situation when all of them are likely to be wrong bar the very last one in the Tax Return, when all information is available at the end of the year.

I also fail to understand how HMRC can pre-populate an MTD Tax Return when at the moment they cannot provide some information for Self Assessment until September following the end of the year of assessment. This may well mean that some people who get their tax Returns in early now may have to wait for months if HMRC insist that only the information they have provided can be accepted.

There is nothing at all wrong with the Current Self Assessment system, which handles just about all scenarios well. Had just a small fraction of the money spent on MTD been used to improve Self Assessment, we really would have a world beating Tax Administration System that would truly benefit us all.

I am fed up with being forced to live other people's crackpot fantasies.