Making tax digital pilot running on old rules

It has been drawn to Taxation’s attention that HMRC’s software for the making tax digital for income tax self-assessment pilot has been programmed on the old basis – with a five-day rather than seven-day deadline for submission of quarterly reports. Another problem is that quarterly reporting is being done on the old non-cumulative basis rather than on the revised cumulative basis.

Caroline Miskin senior technical manager – digital taxation at ICAEW said the reason for this is that HMRC has not yet updated its systems although it expects to do so in time for the public beta in 2025-26.

She described the issue with the deadline as ‘an irritation – rather than a major problem - given that there are no submission penalties for quarterly updates’. The change to a cumulative basis is ‘more significant’ however and she suggests that...