Corporate Vision February 2017

6 CORPORATE VISION / February 2017 NEWS , In response to a consultation with the business communi- ty throughout 2016, HMRC has issued further information about its plans for Making Tax Digital. It comes just weeks after a report by the Treasury Committee recommend- ed that the timeframe for digital- isation be pushed back and the threshold for digital reporting be raised in line with that of VAT re- porting. Richard McNeilly, Managing Part- ner at Dains Accountants and Chair of the UK200Group Digi- talisation Taskforce, said, “Whilst the direction of travel to a digitised environment is welcome, it is im- portant to consider the impact to SMEs. HMRC will no doubt point out that processes will be simpli- fied and therefore that the tran- sition will be timely and ordered. But at what cost to the SME? The more the information is ‘dumbed down’, the more likely it is that SMEs will miss out on available tax reliefs. “Of course, SMEs can choose to use accounting software but it has yet to developed to deal with Mak- ing Tax Digital and so my question remains: why the hurry? Cynical- ly, you could argue that ‘the hurry’ will lead to a big increase in the overall tax take, but more realis- tically the insistence in working to a 2018 start date will cause confu- sion, anxiety and pain for SMEs, already grappling with a myriad of business issues. “A leading economy must be pro- ductive, so let’s help SMEs rather than hindering them. I encourage HMRC to take a look again at the overwhelming feedback from the SME community and defer the rollout of Making Tax Digital.” Andrew Jackson, Head of Tax at UK200Group member Fian- der Tovell and Chair of the UK- 200Group Tax Panel, said, “It is very disappointing that HMRC have not taken much account of the responses to its original pro- posals. Despite the accountancy and tax professions – and SMEs themselves – expressing grave concerns over the practicality of the proposals, almost no changes UK200Group Tax Advisers React to HMRC Digitalisation Plans K The UK200Group is the UK’s leading membership association of independent chartered accountancy and lawfirms across the UK, whose firms act for a total of around 150,000 SME clients.