Making Tax Digital

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I suspect a follow-up interview is required as there appear to be problems with MTD4IT. Has MP Murray considered the red tape/cost may be inhibiting economic growth?


Yes, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury James Murray has been interviewed and questioned about his decision to proceed with the April 2026 timetable for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD4IT).He has discussed the topic across several key appearances and interviews:

AccountingWEB Interview: In an interview with AccountingWEB, Murray explained that upon taking office, he paused to "interrogate" the inherited MTD deadlines. After "robust" talks with HMRC to ensure there were adequate pathways and contingencies to deliver the plan, he officially backed the April 2026 mandation deadline.

Treasury Committee Hearing: During a January 2025 Treasury Committee Session, he was questioned directly by MPs about his motivation for leading the HMRC board. He told the committee he took on a more "hands-on" role to ensure the government is delivering its digital transformation agenda "effectively and at pace".Industry & Developer Events:

Murray has hosted roundtables with software developers, such as Sage, and spoken at industry conferences. At these events, he emphasized that the government views the transition as a "test phase" rather than just a pilot, citing its necessity for long-term economic growth and administrative efficiency

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I think this is a more considered way of saying fcukwits are in charge.

By kevinringer
14th Jul 2026 11:52
The problem is the sayers (HMRC and Government) are not the doers (taxpayers and accountants), so the sayers have no idea where the complexities are, and where simplifications could be introduced. The sayers genuinely thought Basis Period Reform is a simplification (simpler/simplification/simplicity/simplifies is stated 6 times in https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/basis-period-reform/basis-per...).

20+ years ago, HMRC had local tax officers and had regular in-person contact with taxpayers, which meant HMRC officers understood how tax administration impacted taxpayers. Today HMRC has no contact with taxpayers, and like any organisation that loses contact with its "customers", HMRC has replaced knowledge with fiction, and seems to think the typical taxpayer is tech-savvy and has enough free time to successfully implement any regime that HMRC dreams up. HMRC needs to get out of its ivory tower and back into the real world.

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My disapointment with my PB goes back to their failure to stop HMRC spouting guff about the Taxpayers Charter (central to what we do) and at the same time denying 97% of NRCGT appeals in one quarter and allowing 99% in a later quarter...sound fair? (for any TV producers out there, there is a story of deceit and cover up to uncover). My PB ignored a string of emails and finally said something along the lines of we have no appetite to look at this. This is a polar opposite to the help they provided years before in getting HMRC to reduce information requested in the residence pages of a tax return when I and another member requested assistance.

By DoubleEntryTwice
11th Jul 2026 14:32
All the "great and the good" of the tax profession. All in bed with HMRC. That's who they are really serving. Not the profession. Not really.


Replying to DoubleEntryTwice:
Ruth

13th Jul 2026 10:59
I was one of those there on Monday as "the great and the good" and I find this comment insulting. I went to support the new President of the CIOT and to speak to those people I could about admin burdens, tax burdens and the impact of SMEs. That is something I have always stood up for. From the conversations I had, so did the majority of the attendees.
I am proudly a member of the CIOT Indirect Tax Committee and of the ICAEW Tax Faculty. The members of both these groups are volunteers and work hard to try and bring some checks and balances to the tax administrative framework, holding HMRC and HM Treasury to account where possible.
For the record I was at the Office for tax Simplification and it carried out some excellent work, but the pace of simplification is too slow.


Replying to Ruth:

By DoubleEntryTwice
13th Jul 2026 12:34
I don't see much evidence that any of the bodies you have served have achieved much in terms of representing the concerns that a lot of taxpayers and members of the profession have. Also the OTS achieved absolutely nothing. Tax is now more complex than ever and the leg - and the ATT tax book I got the other week - have never been thicker.

You can be as insulted (oh no!) and indignant as you like, but I have eyes and I can see what I can see. Increasing burdens and complexity and no real push back or impact from the professional bodies. Just facilitation and selling HMRC's plans to members. I don't expect you to agree, but that's what I think and I'm not the only one, judging by the comments here.


Replying to Ruth:

By Jo Nokes
13th Jul 2026 13:03
I think the feeling among Awebbers is that the PBs could have done more to push back. I’m thinking of MTD of course. Perhaps they have tried, but it is not apparent.

Replying to Ruth:

By Jdopus
14th Jul 2026 10:48
To be blunt, all the bodies you are a member of feel like controlled opposition theatre. You don't seem to ever accomplish anything of any value when it comes to restricting the ever-endlessly increasing efforts by HMRC to "simply" their own processes by passing their responsibilities directly on to businesses and shuttering the network which is supposed to support businesses in meeting these responsibilities.

As far as I can tell, the CIOT, ICAEW and office of Tax Simplification when it was around exist to provide a service to HMRC - giving all the appearance of opposing and restricting their powers without actually doing so in any meaningful way. i.e. pure Theatre.

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By FactChecker
16th Jul 2026 14:31
I understand your "viewpoint that year 1 is going to be a bit of a shitshow" - and that therefore your expectations are lower than mine.

But your expectations are obviously of the pragmatic/sensible variety, whereas mine are arguably unrealistic/idealistic (based on the rapidly disappearing concept that Govt, the CS and indeed HMRC are expected at least to strive to be correct all the time).
From my perspective, launching a new tax reporting/collection system on the basis that "it's incomplete & imperfect, but not to worry we'll get it right eventually" is an abject failure under the HMRC Charter and a dereliction of duties by those in charge.

That's not to say that taxpayers and agents caught in the MTD net shouldn't use their own best endeavours to overcome HMRC's deficiencies - and try to report correctly and eventually file & pay for their TR.
But nor do I think that we should cut them some slack ... it's their project + their decision to rush it out (a decade late but still incomplete); so it's definitely their fault (which is why I don't like complacent claims of 'success' that evidence anything but that against the normal criteria for a project of this size and importance).

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I perhaps unfairly asked Martin Lewis what he thought of MTD4IT during his day off. His response was implementation had been terrible but he thought in five years it might be a good idea. He then asked me whether I agreed. Luckily for him his arriving transport allowed him to only hear a no from me.

I do hope he and his team monitor the frustration expressed in numerous posts on accountingweb and communicate on TV the time being wasted by everyone involved.

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Exhibit A for Martin Lewis:

By FactChecker
17th Jul 2026 11:25

"I was advised that an overpayment had migrated to MTD and no the customer could not see that part of the puzzle. HMRC are working on a fix."

Not so much 'a fix' as another gaping hole in their spec ... the one for how HMRC's systems work (in this case when 'migrating' taxpayer accounts from the SA platform to the new MTD one).

And it's not just overpayments, this problem affects similar situations (such as POAs).
Worst of all, there's apparently no consistency in what is or isn't transferred (as in where the item is visible to the taxpayer) ... so uncertainty rules.

Oh and 'working on ..'?
This has been reported for best part of 6 months - but in the battle of priorities (when set against the desperate 'need' for MTD to be seen to be working), it's not winning.

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Exhibit B for Martin Lewis:

Can HMRC get ANYTHING right?
When we said MTD would be a mess, why did HMRC not accept we were being prophetic not scarmongering?

I have wasted hours today attempting to put in MTD returns. My first slipped through with no issues. The subsequent attempts, for two different clients, have been a disaster. I was already grumpy at having to redo my ID - putting in my NI number, last tax payment (amount and date) and passport details, the first time, by the sixth or seventh time it got beyond tedious. I then had the HMRC system suggest I had made an error in the NI number, so checked tax returns. I could NOT check what HMRC show as NO number via the Agent Services Account as that only has UTR. Repeated messages saying there was an issue with NI number had me call the helpline. After an unusually short wait, I reached a human who was friendly but failry clueless. Calls to my software supplier elicited the fact that these issues are general. Why did the HMRC all handler not tell me that?

Who knew that an HMRC IT project would have issues? Well, pretty much everyone not sucking the public teat.

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Exhibit C for Martin Lewis:

By Rob Swan
11th Jul 2026 08:24
So here we have yet another fine example of 'The Problem with MTD'.

There's no stable consistent specification for software developers to comply with.

That would be a good (basic necessity) starting point, but there isn't one. As a result, and as we're discovering, individual developers (products) have either not properly understood whatever specification they were using or were/are working to their own 'interpretation' of whatever specification they're using. In practical terms, any (accounting) practice using more than one MTD software product may get different 'behaviour' from each. MTD: Experiences may vary

Then there's MTD's compliance with (the finer points of) the legislation, which it seems not even HMRC is checking. Or complying with?

As I read it, FULL (technically strict) compliance with MTD and the tax legislation requires software which enables strict compliance, because it seems none, not even HMRC, are 'enforcing' compliance, AND you'll need an incredibly detailed knowledge of all the relevant legislation and have to ensure - manually - that what you enter and what HMRC tells you it's accepted, (via MTD), is actually in accordance with the legislation. For software developers, compliance with HMRC's 'MTD API Specification' is not necessarily a guarantee of compliance with the relevant legislation. That's 'spectacular'!!

Please - someone - correct me if I've got this wrong.

If my reading is correct, MTD is simply never going to work, even of it's downfall is a result of compliance failure, not software/system failure. Didn't see that one coming!
If this is the case, I do expect we'll see some 'relaxation' of strict compliance from HMRC simply to cover their own behind, but it doesn't bode well for the future; software developers and HMRC effectively overriding legislation.

Sorry, that was longer than I expected.

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Exhibit D for Martin Lewis:

By Carol Jefferis
16th Jul 2026 10:01
You lost me at 'We ring up HMRC'.
Has that become a viable option again?

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Exhibit E for Martin Lewis:

By johnthegood
10th Jul 2026 12:21
yes a lot of people seem to be getting quite worked up over this in the perhaps laudable intention of "getting it right", personally I am firmly in the "don't care" bracket, 5 days here or there makes no difference to me or anyone else, I will carry on preparing figures to the end of the month even if its declared as the 5th.