IPSE backs House of Lords calls to further delay Making Tax Digital introduction

• 22 Nov 2018

IPSE has today supported recommendations from the House of Lords to further delay the introduction of mandatory Making Tax Digital for VAT.

The call was one of the key recommendations of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s report, ‘Making Tax Digital for VAT: Treating Small Businesses Fairly’, released today.

Simon McVicker, IPSE’s Director of Policy, commented: “We support digitisation of the tax system, but we are worried about the speed of the implementation.

“HMRC’s initial timetable for Making Tax Digital was way too ambitious and targeted the wrong businesses.

“IPSE was grateful to the government for heeding our calls and delaying the initial implementation until 2019.

“However, we are concerned that many self-employed businesses simply don’t know about the new requirements.

“The costs for implementing these changes could be higher than government predictions, so we’d welcome a further delay to give our smallest businesses some extra breathing room.

“A surprisingly large number of very small businesses still keep paper records.

“They don’t have access to in-house accounting and finance departments like bigger businesses and are therefore at greater risk of being disrupted by the new reporting requirements.”