MTD (Making Tax Digital) compliance in UK

I have used the export of the Tax Summary into Excel and created a macro to give me the required VAT values. As yet I have not tried VitalTax or any other software as I am waiting to see it Manager will create an export from the VAT Calculation Worksheet.

The price of “bridging software” seems to vary a great deal.

VitalTax seems to be free (??), some suppliers charge per VAT return upload and others seems to be anywhere between £40 to £80 for a one year licence. Some of them seem to upload directly to HMRC while others, it appears, upload to a server before uploading to HMRC.

My preference is for local-only data with nothing stored or uploaded anywhere other than HMRC. It is not always clear on these supplier’s websites just how their solution works.

UK MTD VAT submission - is it possible to add “export” button to VAT CALCULATION WORKSHEET - as TAX SUMMARY still need some calculation to be done like EU Sales. By Ading the button to VAT Calculation Worksheet and using external Bridging software MANAGER will be compliant to HMRC’s requirement and we can carry on using the software, which I personally love using it…

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Yes please. An “export” button on the Tax Calxulation Worksheet would mean we could use Manager with any MTD bridging software with ease.

Any news about mtd?MTD

@Showtime, I am not the one to ask. If you will read this thread, you will see I’ve made that abundantly clear many times already.

Its a shame that there doesn’t appear to be any progress with MTD, even no sign of exporting data from the Tax Calculation Worksheet. It would be great if “manager” helped us users by developing the MTD functionality. I am sure it would be very popular.

MTD support will be added to Manager by end of this month.

It will require some sort of bridging software though. The idea is that Manager will provide data which can be copied & pasted into bridging software.

@Alan1351 do you know if VitalTax is the most affordable on the market right now? Ideally we want something that is free and cross-platform.

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Hi Lubos.

The number of MTD sloutions availabe seems to grown dramatically in the last few months. You can check the list on HMRC’s site here:

I did my research a few months ago and chose Vital Tax. It is an add-in to Excel that you use to link to spreadsheet cells that contain your VAT values. I did this for the first time last week. I used the Manager Tax Calculation report and transcribed the numbers to a spreadsheet. I triggered the add-in and pointed it to each of the transcribed values. The API linked to the HMRC site and made the submission. Quick and straightforward.

When I downloaded Vital Tax it was free. Since then things seem to have changed and the Vital Tax site now says it is free for the first year and then £1 per month thereafter.

Has anyone out there tried other offerings?

Alan

Hello Lubos,

Thank you for your response.
MTD VAT submission to HMRC via bridging software, in our case it will be have to be done via Excel Add-on [ Vital or others]. But we will be not able to use “Cut and Paste” as you mentioned above, there has be a digital link between softwares, 3 if necessary. The data needs to be exported into a file could be CSV format outside “Manager” which then needs to be imported in excel, and figures submitted via Add-on. As Alan mention Vital was Free few months back, now it a £1 a month after a year, probably the most compactively available. I know “Manager” is now able to export data in a csv or any format outside the software, will you be able to develop this feature?

And Yes Alan, some one has used Vital Tax, it works, if you want to read more its in the forum somewhere.

Just found KVat on GitHub. It’s a free Windows exe file which interfaces with spreadsheets. One of the FAQ’s says “As from the 4th April 2019 KVAT appears on the HMRC software listed as ‘Kavina Systems Ltd.’”. Not tried it yet other than to run the KVAT.exe file. Ref: GitHub - kavina-systems/MTD: HMRC MTD VAT bridging / soft landing software

Nick

I’ve submitted my last 2 MTD returns using the output from Tax Summary with Vitaltax. Some more details:

After installing the add-in, and registering, you have the option to choose a number of template outputs. There are about 4 from other accountancy packages or you can do what I did and choose “custom”.
After opening the .csv output from Tax summary and adding a box for EC sales & purchases (which isn’t an output from Tax summary) in the VitalTax pane (which has the same format as the old government gateway data entry) you tell it in which boxes the information resides and hit submit.
It retained the knowledge of my custom template for the second return and simply opening the .CSV file output from Tax summary was sufficient for it to pull in the correct information.

As such, by the letter of HMRC’s law, my first return was probably considered data manipulation but the second return wasn’t.

I’ve found the support from VitalTax excellent and whilst I would prefer it to be free indefinately, I’d be happy enough paying £1/month after the first year. It would be good to get a template in the VitalTax dropdown that is called “Manager” and design a .csv output which auto-fills the data.

I have no affiliation with VitalTax.

It’s not the cheapest (£45 a year) and I have not used it, but it has an identical forum as Manager and their support seems to be very good as well. So if anyone is interested in using them for MTD submissions. I am considering doing my submissions for the first time in July using them as they are UK based and I like their community feel. They are obviously a fully fledged accounting program as well, but I am only using them for MTD VAT submissions. However, I will look at Vitaltax as well.

Just to add to the comments above. I have now completed 3 VAT submissions via Vitaltax and it works simply and efficiently with Manager Accounting. As pointed out previously though, it would benefit greatly from the “VAT Calculation worksheet” having an export facility. Once this was available a template within Vitaltax would be possible to simplify the procedure further.
I would re-iterate the comment above that a “cut-and-paste” procedure would NOT be an acceptable solution from Manager as there would not be the required digital link. Hence the export of data (csv) requested previously.
There are other bridging software solutions out there and many may be as good or better than Vitaltax. But, at the now declared pricing structure, I think it would be a good option for Manager to work towards integrating with. Their support is excellent, as mentioned above and also the data transfer from Vitaltax is direct to HMRC rather than through a 3rd party server. (A personal preference of mine!). I should point out that I am in no way connected with Vitaltax!

@laidback if Manager was to generate CSV file with required data, what CSV columns are needed?

lubos I have attempted to provide a CSV format that should relate to the UK VAT form. It would require putting out into separate columns any EU related tax codes.

I have included other tax codes that may or may not be EU related. Can you separate out EU related taxes?

I have cut and pasted a spreadsheet so I hope it comes across OK.

I would welcome any other input/checking to see if this proposal to help lubos would work.

Tax Summary Net Sales - Non EU Net Sales - EU Only Total Net Sales Tax on Sales Net Purchases - Non EU Net Purchases - EU Only Total Net Purchases Tax on Purchases - EU Only Tax on Purchases - All
VAT 0% B1 C1 B1+C1 E1 F1 G1 F1+G1 I1 J1
VAT 0% (EU) B2 C2 B2+C2 E2 F2 G2 F2+G2 I2 J2
VAT 20% B3 C3 B3+C3 E3 F3 G3 F3+G3 I3 J3
VAT Exempt B4 C4 B4+C4 E4 F4 G4 F4+G4 I4 J4
VAT Other (EU) B5 C5 B5+C5 E5 F5 G5 F5+G5 I5 J5
VAT Other B6 C6 B6+C6 E6 F6 G6 F6+G6 I6 J6
Total Sum Col Sum Col - Rounded Sum Col - Rounded Sum Col Sum Col Sum Col - Rounded Sum Col - Rounded Sum Col Sum Col
UK VAT Input Boxes Box #8 Box #6 Box #1 Box #9 Box #7 Box #2 Box #4

Hi Lubos.
Exciting!!!
From VAT Calculation Worksheet
The csv file should have the following Box values, [ note box 3 and 5 are calculated ]

Box 1: Output VAT
Box 2: VAT due in this period on Acquisition from other EC members States
Box 4: VAT reclaimed in this period on purchases and other inputs (including acquisitions from the EC)
Box 6: Total value of sales and all other outputs excluding any VAT. Include your box 8 figure.
Box 7: Total value of purchases and all other inputs excluding any VAT. Include your box 9 figure.
Box 8: Total value of all supplies of goods and related costs, excluding any VAT, to other EC Member States.
Box 9: Total value of acquisitions of goods and related costs, excluding any VAT, from other EC Member States.

Looking forward in anticipation

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Where is Vital Tax listed under HMRC. Its not there and I am a bit worried about considering software that is not approved by HMRC.

See list at this URL.

https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/making-tax-digital-software

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Sorry for the delay in replying. I’m in China at present and communication is a bit flakey at best! Anyway, the format for the MTD submission is identical to the existing format so a CSV in exactly the same layout as the"VAT calculation worksheet" will be ideal. So 9 rows ( as Pendu shows above,) with column A being the text description and column B being the values. It’s then a simple case to reference those figures to"Vitaltax". No doubt HMRC will complicate this in years to come but worry about that then!.

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