Postby etf » Sat Aug 01, 2026 6:05 am
Receipt or deceit? The MTD confirmation gap
by Robyn Milstead
Robyn Milstead examines the missing reassurance around MTD submissions and asks whether taxpayers and agents can really trust that ‘submitted’ means ‘received by HMRC’.
31st Jul 2026
Do you remember simpler times? When straightforward sole traders and landlords only had to think about tax once a year.
When a tax return didn’t have lots of different names (and which name is right anyway?). And when submitting one ended with something reassuringly tangible: a receipt. An Inland Revenue (IR) mark even!
I remember when, as the junior in the tax team, it was my job on 31 January to sprint to the local HMRC office carrying a stack of paper tax returns, arriving just before closing time. If all went well, you’d walk away with a stamped acknowledgement confirming they had been received before the deadline.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it provided certainty.
I’ve written before about the differences between self assessment and Making Tax Digital for income tax (MTD). One of the biggest changes isn’t just the move to quarterly reporting – it’s that the submission process itself has fundamentally changed.
Under self assessment, we calculated the tax and sent HMRC the answer. Under MTD, we send the underlying information, HMRC performs its own calculation, and the taxpayer (or agent) must agree with that calculation before the process is complete. Miss that final stage and you will not have made the submission you thought you had.
Even experienced agents are still discovering quirks within the new system. Some software, for example, continually updates HMRC with revised figures as inputs are amended because it relies on HMRC’s calculation rather than producing one itself. Personally, I’m uncomfortable with that approach… but that’s a discussion for another day.
Today I want to talk about something much more basic. Submission receipts.
The missing receipt
One of the most familiar things about the self assessment process was the acknowledgement.
First, it provided independent confirmation from HMRC that your submission had actually been received. Secondly, it gave you something concrete to show your client. Job done.
However, under MTD that reassurance largely disappears for quarterly updates.
Until recently, I hadn’t really considered the significance of this. It was my Accountants Therapy partner-in-crime, Tom Bickle, who mentioned it in passing. He was right.
There isn’t a standard HMRC acknowledgement in the way many of us have become accustomed to. Your software may display that an obligation has been fulfilled or it may provide its own confirmation screen, but if you want independent confirmation from HMRC, the most reliable method is to log into the Government Gateway and check the obligations are showing as fulfilled yourself.
That’s inconvenient enough for agents.
For taxpayers managing their own affairs, it’s even less realistic. Many will have dug out their Government Gateway credentials purely to connect their software. After that, why would they ever think to log back in just to verify that what the software told them was actually reflected on HMRC’s systems?
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When software says ‘submitted’
This became particularly concerning during some testing I carried out on software marketed as MTD-ready but which, at the time of testing, did not appear on HMRC’s recognised software list.
After entering only basic personal details, I was presented with an in-app banner stating, ‘MTD Q1 Update: Submitted’, followed by, ‘This 2026/27 digital update has been successfully submitted to HMRC.’
What worried me wasn’t the extremely legitimate-looking message alone.
I had not entered a national insurance number or unique taxpayer reference. I had not connected a Government Gateway account. Yet the application displayed what appeared to be a successful submission confirmation. At that point, most users would quite reasonably close the app and assume the job was finished.
How many would independently log into HMRC to verify it?
I suspect very few.
A market that lacks consistency
This boils down to what happens when there is no consistent standard for how software should demonstrate that a submission has genuinely been accepted by HMRC.
If every product is free to design its own workflows, terminology and confirmation screens, it becomes increasingly difficult for taxpayers to distinguish between a genuine HMRC acknowledgement and a message generated entirely within the software.
When you’ve been making submissions, have you been sure they’re successfully received by HMRC? Have you checked your (difficult to navigate) agent services account each time? I haven’t.
I’ve also become increasingly concerned by reports of products relying on third-party bridging software behind the scenes. If taxpayer data is being passed through additional providers, users should clearly understand where their information is going and why. Transparency matters, particularly when dealing with tax data.
Do you know whether the providers you’re using for clients are making the submission or bridging in the background?
A problem that will only grow
MTD has created an entirely new, unregulated, software marketplace serving an enormous set of new customers who are, in general, poorly tax educated and increasingly have no adviser as we get through the various mandated cohorts.
Yet there remains remarkably little consistency between products.
There is no familiar tax return layout. No standardised submission journey. No universally recognised confirmation from HMRC. Even the terminology varies from one provider to another.
That makes it unnecessarily difficult for taxpayers to judge whether they’re using reliable software or simply persuasive marketing. The recognised software list is valuable, but only if taxpayers know it exists and understand why it matters.
As MTD expands, software will become the primary interface between millions of taxpayers and HMRC. That means consistency, transparency and clear evidence of successful submissions will become more and more important for quality control.
Says it all really.