MTD VAT returns

[magnacom]

would it be theoretically possible to :-

post a single goods/vat invoice for total sales and a single one for total purchases solely for the purpose in submitting the vat return electronically if the figures were produced from an alternate accounts package?

thanks
scott

[ian_roberts]

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-70022-making-tax-digital-for-vat/vat-notice-70022-making-tax-digital-for-vat#examples-of-where-a-digital-link-is-required suggests that that would be ok as long as the link from the other package into QuickFile is “digital” rather than manual copy and paste. Whether exporting a CSV from the other package and importing it into QuickFile counts as a digital link, I’m not sure.

NB I’m not an accountant, this is purely my reading of the HMRC guidance and not professional advice

[Lurch]

I think you’d get away with an export/import under this clause this time round;

digital link - data should ideally be imported or exported between programs digitally, but in first year a ‘soft landing’ will be applied to allow businesses time to update legacy systems

They keep saying you can use “bridging software” to get spreadsheets into an MTD compatible software package, one would assume this could include your office software and/or operating system. As always it’s specific enough to be totally vague and meaningless!

[ian_roberts]

Actually, looking again at that document I linked to, §3.2.1 specifically says that “XML, CSV import and export, and download and upload of files” counts as a digital link. So if you can get a CSV out of the other software in a suitable form to import as an invoice/purchase in QuickFile then you’d seem to be covered even without the soft landing rules.

[magnacom]

thanks for this info…

[ian_roberts]

@Lurch

They keep saying you can use “bridging software” to get spreadsheets into an MTD compatible software package, one would assume this could include your office software and/or operating system. As always it’s specific enough to be totally vague and meaningless!

As far as I can tell the intent is that they don’t want you manually typing or copy-pasting numbers from one program to another. It’s ok to use several different programs together to satisfy MTD obligations as long as the data transfer between them doesn’t rely on a human to correctly transcribe a number.