Cirrostratus to host Making Tax Digital webinar in light of new changes to legislation for self-employed

Cirrostratus Exedra, the company that runs the VAT Direct Making Tax Digital Service, has announced an online question and answer session to look at Making Tax Digital on 13th August 2020.

The event will be jointly hosted with The Book Keepers forum and is taking place in light of the Financial Secretary to the Treasury Jesse Norman MP saying earlier this week that Making Tax Digital will be mandatory for the UK Self Employed from the tax year 2023-24.

Ex-MP John Hemming, CEO of Cirrostratus Cirrostratus Exedra has warned the self-employed to "fix their quarter dates", and during the online event welcomes specific questions about the news.

"Perhaps the biggest change", said Mr Hemming, "is that the self-employed will be expected to submit tax information every quarter. Many self-employed people are also registered for VAT. VAT has always required quarterly submissions. If self-employed people don't make sure that their VAT quarters are the same as their self-employed tax quarters in advance then they will end up doing eight sets of accounts as opposed to four sets of accounts."

"Hence the most efficient thing that the self-employed can do is to fix their quarter dates for self-employment to be the same as their VAT periods. This may mean that some people may need to move their VAT quarter. If people do VAT on a monthly basis it will be easier, but they then need also to make sure that their tax year is April 1st to March 31st. HMRC will treat this as being equivalent to April 6th to April 5th, but it still needs to be sorted out in advance."

"People need to be careful", he said, "because HMRC currently doesn't have an online process for changing the year-end dates for self-employment. Hence if this is left until the financial year 2023-24, it could end up as a bit of a mess with people having to do a lot of work that would have been unnecessary if they had "fixed their quarters".

"Making Tax Digital for Self Employment does allow monthly submissions if taxpayers wish to submit information monthly. For taxpayers who are also VAT registered and submit their VAT figures on a monthly basis, there is a simple solution which is to submit both VAT and Income Tax figures monthly."

To register for the event, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/questions-and-answers-about-making-tax-digital-income-tax-and-vat-tickets-114522333382

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The company provides accounting systems which link to HMRC’s Making Tax digital for VAT, Income Tax (Self Assessment) and Agents API. The system enables the downloading of bank statements using Open Banking so that they can be used as part of our Making Tax Digital integrated cashbook system or as part of other accounting systems. Clients download the bank statement and then flag them for tax purposes then submit to HMRC.

This release was published on openPR.