Pricing

Setting up for Making Tax Digital is a one-off project with four parts: choosing HMRC-recognised software that suits how you actually work, getting your records into it, connecting it to HMRC, and agreeing who files what from now on. In practice we start by looking at how you keep records today — spreadsheets, a shoebox, or an existing cloud package — then migrate your opening balances so the software starts from a correct position rather than a guess. We connect your bank feeds so transactions arrive automatically, authorise the software with HMRC, and set up agent authorisation so we can see the same submissions you do. The whole thing usually takes a couple of weeks of elapsed time, most of which is waiting on HMRC authorisation codes rather than work at your end.

Every VAT-registered business, without exception for size. This is the point most people get wrong, because MTD for VAT arrived in stages: it applied to businesses above the registration threshold from April 2019, and was extended to all VAT-registered businesses — including voluntarily registered ones below the threshold — from April 2022. So if you are registered for VAT, you are in MTD for VAT now, regardless of turnover. It has nothing to do with the April 2026 Income Tax dates, which are a separate regime with separate thresholds. If you are voluntarily registered, turning over £40,000 and still keying your return into HMRC’s website, you have been non-compliant for some years and should fix it rather than wait for someone to notice.

You need enough to prepare a correct return and to prove the figures if HMRC asks: all sales and other income, all business expenses, bank and cash records, and — if you are VAT registered — a VAT account. If you hold stock, you need year-end stock figures. If you own business assets, you need records of what you bought, when, and for how much. The test HMRC applies is whether the records support the return, so a bank statement alone is rarely enough: it shows £340 left your account but not what it was for or whether it was allowable. That is why the receipt matters as much as the payment. Under MTD these same records simply have to be kept digitally rather than in a folder.