Whilst the majority of the country has been concentrating on Britain’s exit from the EU, HMRC has been quietly preparing us for the arrival of Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT. Well it’s here and time to say Hello MTD.

With a small number of exceptions, all businesses which are VAT registered and whose turnover is greater than the registration threshold of £85,000 will have to submit their returns digitally. This means direct from your accounting systems to HMRC’s computers, without going through the Government Gateway or any other portal.

We have been working with clients for months now to prepare them for the arrival of MTD. If you run a business and are not aware of what is needed, you need to ‘get your skates on’.

Identify which HMRC-approved software you are going to use

The first job is to identify which software you are going to use. There are several cloud accounting systems that are available and most will do the job adequately for a ‘basic’ business. Our experience, however, is that the providers have brought a simple product to market, but that as soon as you need something a little more sophisticated, they come up short.

Work out what you need your accounting system to do for you, examine the options, talk to your advisers and take the plunge!

It is possible to keep your records on spreadsheets and add bridging software that will submit your returns digitally. But don’t assume you can simply use whatever software you want; to be acceptable to HMRC, they have to approve it in advance.

Change is coming very quickly and, if you’re affected, you need to be taking action now.