MTD VAT returns

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

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

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

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!

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.

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thanks for this info…

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.

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