New quarterly self assessment digital tax for self employed- confused

[toiletpaperthief]

I've been watching videos on how to and can't fully figure this one out. I believe it starts April 26 (next month!) and we need to download the HMRC app on our phone. We need to make payments every 3 months now?. I usually fill in my taxes online before the 31st Jan deadline, usually on christmas because I've got plenty of free time and can properly concentrate on sending the right paperwork and revising it. Does that mean I will need to start filling my taxes every 3 months starting this April or I can wait till next Christmas and do the whole tax year as usual?

Sory for sounding like a dumb blond but I find it confusing. Has anyone properly figured this out?

That will only buy you another year. Why so weird about it? Iys only keeping on top of your bookkeeping and submitting the sums across digitally. Still one tax return, still the same payment dates.

Sucks to be a childminder though, we're having a load of our tax deductions changed. They really do have a long term plan to get rid of childminders.

Not had a single one. Checked all emails. Dd told me and she only knew because someone told her.

Neither of us and a few other people we have told (some of whom this would directly affect) are in the same boat. Only hearing about it via word of mouth.

Whilst they might think they have told everyone about this new rule and everyone knows, I can say they haven’t and they don’t

But there again, I am nearing retirement and the only communication I received from any government agency about my pension was in 1985

They are trying to roll it out gradually and the thinking is: more information: fewer surprises. Less chance of hidden tax bill you can't pay, delay or account for.

They probably thought everyone does a quarterly check on their accounts anyway. It's a pain if you've been using spreadsheets or a logbook, but decent accounting software hooked up to a dedicated bank account should make this more painless. Once every three months to check and reconcile is better than doing it for the whole year, at midnight, before the deadline .

I went incorporated last year and that's another type of hell.

I’m sure I’ve read that sole traders will have to use standard accounting dates ( April- April) for MTD even if they’ve previously used Jan-Jan etc.

Yeah, they did this already a couple of years back. To align everyone ready for MDT I guess

I admit I’m nervous of this

I’ve always done my tax return just after April so know what to pay

but don’t pay till end of jan

so now I will have to do every 3mths is that right using an app instead of usual self assessment

and where we do yearly usually , you fill it in 4 times a year ?

or am I mis understanding

and same @LaurieFairyCake tho tbh I don’t earn that now as single parent and bae to for work around childcare

The two things I have done are make a separate account (not a business account) for all relevant expenses and set that up to feed into Clearbooks free software. The transactions all show up automatically and can be allocated in a fairly straightforward way. Then all I will have to do is link my HMRC account and the software should create and send in the MTD return for me

I could be wrong but my reading is that over 30k you should be tracking payments in this way from this April so as to build up data for your 26-27 tax return from next April.

Must admit I'm grumpy about this. My "payments in" is just a dedicated savings account with the same bank as our joint current account; no real expenses, so it's worked fine for some years. But it won't hook up to any form of software, so I think I'll need a business account. Any recommendations?

(I have a long-standing freelance income from a company that endlessly cocks up its transactions. I hate to think how long it's going to take them to catch up with a new account number for me.)

Does the bank account actually have to be linked to the software? My accounts are so simple, I was hoping to just manually enter it into some HMRC compliant software.

Must start looking for a software package… The whole thing is ridiculous.

Hi - no it doesn’t. You can simply enter the records manually or import them from a spreadsheet. Im not an expert but I have been testing things out.
I am using a software provider called freeagent. I have two logins, one for my sole trader stuff, one as a landlord.
The landlord one is not connected to my bank account and I am just going to import the transactions that are relevant. Whereas the sole trader one is linked to my mettle business bank account and it all works automatically (I hope).

You can simply enter the records manually or import them from a spreadsheet.

Ah, possibly my misunderstanding from the very tedious online seminar run by HMRC, where I thought they'd said you couldn't put the data in manually.

I don’t think I want it linked to my bank account