You will be a criminal if you do any work other than PAYE.

[Itisnoteasybeingdifferent]

Because from next year you must submit four tax returns a year on line. If you don't you will be subject to penalties and fines.

If you rent out property, do any self employed work, have shares, do any sort of trading you will be swept up in this.

Agree Granny. You can download the HMRC 'Basic PAYE Tools' and just use that with your existing process.

Sorry Alexander, posted before seeing your comment.

We've got about 30. HMRC is for less than 10.

Barbara my DH works in an industry where Umbrella Companies are very common, though most of the ones I'm aware of are financially beneficial (until they get caught!). Sorry if post came across wrong

I'm self-employed. I do not have an accountant, or any fancy accounting software. The VAT threshold is £83k - I am well under that. I already do self-assessment annually and that takes 5 minutes, especially as I am not "trading" in the sense of buying stock, adding value and selling it on. I am providing a service so my income is also my profit.

Even though I have no fancy accounting software I keep a spreadsheet with details of all my income. I could tell you exactly what I earned in May 2013, or October 2015 and break it down by client.

But like I said I'm under the VAT threshold and so it's all academic. And I'm definitely not a criminal.

Has anyone got a link as to where this is all explained?

The government has already pledged to remove the smallest businesses, self-employed people and landlords from the scope of the changes by exempting all those with annual turnover of less than £10k from digital record keeping and quarterly updates (although they can still choose to enroll). This was in addition to those who were already removed from scope by the exemption for those with secondary income below £10,000.

This quote was extracted from the full official explanation of what the change is all about here.

www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digital/overview-of-making-tax-digital

Does it really have to be online??

www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digital-for-business/making-tax-digital-for-business

Has the dates and I believe there is a video somewhere (an HMRC one) that explains it all.

It will be a bit of a PITA, but in the first instance it only affects VAT registered businesses (who would have all the information already as they would have needed it to submit a VAT return).

I can't see why it would make anyone a criminal though !?

Making tax digital is running behind and heading for the rocks, just no one has noticed. They will get it working eventually.

If it works as well as hmrc current online tax submission - no drama. Tax return takes me 20 mins, it is the record keeping that takes more.

I knew nothing about this and ive done 7 years of tax returns as have two jobs one paye and one self employed. Ive always found doing returns online v simple Im pretty much earn pin money as self employed so no vat but pays for my professional membership. Tax office v helpful when you phone so ill check. First year i took my records and receipts in and said am i doing this right. They checked and said perfect so continued. I keep v good records monthly so v easy end of the year. Ive never used an accoundant as tbh i dont earn enough to cover their fee. I keep receipts for costs and monies in in a folder under each month and end of year add it up. Would someone like me be effected by this.

It is all the extra work that has to be done that will cause the trouble.
the entire make tax hard work platform is adding to regulatory costs. Weekly PAYE returns.

Quarterly tax returns.

Some of our clients are hard enough to chase for an annual tax return.. having to chase the four times a year will do nothing to help us.. If we simply try and charge them for chasing them we are likely to loose clients.. but otherwise it is lost chargeable time...

It will be the penalties for failing to comply that will get people... Four submissions a year is four times as much work... OK and fine if you have time to spare. Easy to miss a quarterly deadline and get a fine..

And right now a government web site is down making it impossible to do a bit of work.. Time wasted money lost.. how much fun when everyone is trying to log on every quarter to do the return when the site is down.

But it's not four full submissions a year. It's income and expenditure. That's it. MTD was announced in 2015 and is not actually going to be any more work - anybody with a clue already keeps accounting records to do their yearly SA. If you're using software you will run a report quarterly and send the info off. Job done.

A fine for late return isn't a criminal offence though.

I used to be VAT registered and now am not (work in a different field).

TBH as someone said upthread, it's easier in a way to work it out four times a year. Saves that massive, oh god, block out a day, I don't even want to start, tax binge day as most of the work is done.

No fancy tax software here either: I do the accounting for both DH and my income on Excel.

Thank god DP is an accountant .. I have no idea what taxes are about

Submit vat quarterly as it is. Expect my accountant might put his fees up a little.
I'm not a criminal, I pay taxes and will continue to.

Bit worrying if software is needed. I declare income from lodgers (although moving this year so won't have that any more) and a small self employed income along side full time PAYE. Profit this year likely to be under 4k altogether, but I enjoy doing it so don't want forced out by expensive software! Fwiw I submit the tax return yearly in April/may so hardly avoiding hmrc!

Oh just noticed not under 10k. Hope that's profit!

Do you mean IR35? It comes into force for people working for public sector bodies next month. I put all our contractors through the calculator today and they all passed, so no change required to the way they work or are paid.

If things are tightened up to make sure everyone pays the tax they should, good.

IR35 is a completely separate can of worms!