UK MTD deferral requires HMRC approval

In October 2018, HMRC announced the deferral of Making Tax Digital (MTD) by six months for over 35,000 businesses. The affected businesses including those filing:

• group VAT returns;
• VAT divisions;
• trusts;
• non-resident tax payers;
• businesses making payments on account;
• businesses on annual accounting scheme; and
• public bodies with supplementary disclosure requirements.

Deferral is granted by a direct notification from HMRC, which have now been sent out. Any businesses which have not received such a communication are therefore required to implement the new requirements from 1 April 2019. VAT payers should therefore contact HMRC now if they believe they qualify for the deferral, but have not yet received a HRMC letter.

From 1 April 2019, over 1 million UK businesses will be required to file their VAT returns via HMRC’s new Making Tax Digital (MTD) API-portal. This will require accounting software or specially enabled Excel spreadsheets to file the nine-box information directly without human intervention or manual keying-in.