Making Tax (too) Difficult, nah, just quit

[Protagoras]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/088c2fe14d411f20

"Self-employed weigh up whether Making Tax Digital’s quarterly burden is worth it"

While this is about actual self-employed, rather than contractors, it's interesting insofar as it's another 'initiative' that makes life difficult for folks who don't want to be - or can't be - employed.

[sadkingbilly]

some of us ARE 'self-employed'

[ladymuck]

MTD is also for landlords. The threshold reducing every year so that anything that's above minimum wage (ish) levels will need 5 returns a year is an admin burden too far for the level of benefit the taxpayer gains. HMRC forecasts of annual liability for a self-employed person who doesn't have a constant level of income will be next to useless.

[Protagoras]

And possibly a pre-cursor to quarterly payments, so that it becomes impossible to smooth cashflow over the year for those whose work is in peaks and troughs, or who don't work in the summer.

Many of the readers' comments re that item are from people saying they'll give up, and also a lot of complaints about IR35. Of course the comments won't reflect all perspectives.

When MTD arrived for VAT, the process 'improvement' was easy, but pointless.

For me it went from
- Determine figures, enter to website
to
- Determine figures, enter to Excel, login / upload with pre-requisite one-off setup work and cost.

[Protagoras]

some of us ARE 'self-employed'

Fair point, sorry about that

[DolanAccountancyAshley]

Whilst I agree it does feel like yet another admin burden, we attended a seminar a few weeks ago where FreeAgent demonstrated how MTD will work on their software. I’m optimistic they have simplified the process as much as possible on their side. Fingers crossed it works that smoothly in practice! 🙈

[OliHughes9]

The real concern with MTD isn’t just the software transition, it’s the reporting frequency and how that impacts cashflow planning for those with irregular income. Quarterly submissions may improve visibility for HMRC, but they don’t necessarily reflect how seasonal or project-based work actually functions. The admin burden might be manageable with good systems, but the timing implications are what many are understandably worried about.