Digitalisation: HMRC’s perspective

Readers do not need me to tell them that Making Tax Digital (MTD) is the most important issue facing tax practitioners. In recent weeks we have published opinion pieces from readers who have made their concerns plain and I have no doubt that we will publish further strong views in the months ahead.

In the interest of reflecting the widest range of views in the magazine I put some of these concerns to Theresa Middleton who is in overall charge of the MTD business programme at HMRC.

Hubbard: Let’s start with quarterly reporting. Readers struggle to understand why HMRC requires businesses to do this. HMRC has said that it is not going to enquire into quarterly reports when they are made and they are not going to be used in the computation of tax liabilities. So quarterly reports seem to be an additional burden imposed on business with no...