Making Tax Digital: SMEs Must Have More Time To Prepare

Ed Molyneux,, CEO and co-founder at FreeAgent

14.11.2016 09:45 am

The government has ambitious targets in place for implementing its MTD strategy and getting people to start reporting their tax digitally, but I believe there needs to be more flexibility when it comes to smaller businesses. The average freelancer or micro-business owner doesn’t have the resources that a larger SME has to get themselves prepared for the switchover, and many will struggle to upgrade their processes in such a short timeframe.

We know that the very smallest businesses making less than £10,000 will be exempted from the scheme entirely, but we are now urging HMRC to help those in the next category up. We believe every business making annual turnover of between £10,000-£83,000 should have an additional year to prepare for MTD.

This will mean that HMRC can monitor how larger SMEs are managing the move to digital tax, without having to worry about large numbers of micro-businesses struggling to adapt to the changes or having issues with implementing new technology.