In the small print of the documents issued yesterday by the government relating to the autumn statement:
Making Tax Digital: reducing errors through record keeping
Measure description
This measure will require businesses, self-employed people and landlords to integrate electronic record keeping with online tax reporting using business accounting software and to update their tax information at least quarterly to HMRC using these digital tools. The software, which will include apps for mobile devices, will include minimum standard functionality and data capture that prevents some error and promotes compliance. The use of software will reduce incidences of errors in tax returns, saving the public money.
These requirements will apply to most businesses including
companies, sole traders, self-employed people, partnerships and landlords.
It will not apply to employees, or pensioners, with a secondary income source from self-employment or property and whose gross income from this secondary source is under £10,000 per year.
The taxes in scope for this measure are Income Tax (IT), National Insurance Contributions (NICs), Corporation Tax (CT) and Value Added Tax (VAT).
The measure will be implemented for IT and NICs from April 2018, VAT from April 2019 and CT from April 2020. The roll out will be staggered by regime and in each case the year prior to mandating for each regime will consist of testing amongst a limited cohort of customers.
