What's MTD about?
Making Tax Digital is a new regime to make it more efficient for HMRC to collect tax. For VAT and Income Tax (when you are in business as a self employed person), businesses that keep electronic records can submit their tax return information to HMRC electronically using software, eliminating any human errors in the transmission process. Of course this will not eliminate errors in record keeping! It will streamline the reporting of VAT and Income Tax Self Assessment returns.
Approved Software
To ensure that the tax returns are correctly received by HMRC you must submit your returns using approved software that has been tested and accepted as working by HMRC (there's a list of approved software on their site).
When you use Ambition MTD your submission is made by CHM MTD Bridge which is listed as approved.
We have been supporting Sage users with VAT returns for years, and now we support ITSA returns as well.
Electronic Records
If you already have Sage Accounts software then you already have electronic records. You will need to send the VAT return generated by your Sage software to HMRC automatically, using an approved submission tool.
For ITSA your profit and loss statement in Sage is used to provide your income and expenditure.
That's what Ambition MTD provides, in conjunction with CHM MTD Bridge.
When does it take effect?
Apart from limited exceptions businesses will need to start submitting via MTD for their first VAT period that starts on or after 1st April 2019.
HMRC say you should register at least one week before you need to submit your VAT return.
Who needs to register?
All organisations who file a VAT return, and are not exempted, will need to register and prepare to file their VAT returns via MTD compliant solutions.
Users of Sage Accounts software can use Ambition MTD and CHM MTD Bridge.
What's the future?
HMRC may extend what's required of software in the future, for example providing transaction information. Exact details, and when it will be required, are unknown.
Whatever the future may hold, Ambition MTD enables users of Sage Accounts to make considerable savings.