Be prepared to Make Tax Digital with Microsoft Dynamics

Your company is GDPR compliant, you’ve just come back from your summer holiday and all bases seem covered. I’m not here to rain on your parade, but if you haven’t, we all need to start considering next year’s requirement by HMRC to Make Tax Digital.

Making Tax Digital is going to be the ‘buzzword’ you can’t escape from in the coming months and to start off, you’re probably asking: “Well, tell me what on earth it is?”

To be as straight as a die, HMRC are modernising and they want to collect much more information with a new online VAT return system, in the same way as they did a few years ago with RTI for PAYE. The Making Tax Digital requirements will be enforced from April 2019 and it will be compulsory for all VAT registered businesses which we believe includes you.

So what steps do you need to take to Make Tax Digital?

By April 2019, all businesses above the threshold will need to:

• Keep digital records for VAT purposes – your Microsoft Dynamics system already does this for you so your already covered but you will need to complete more fields such as VAT Registration numbers on Customers & Vendors
• Provide detailed VAT return information to HMRC with Making Tax Digital compatible software and not through the current HMRC portal – your Microsoft Dynamics system is going to need an update to do that

Will Microsoft Dynamics become compatible with Making Tax Digital?

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customers (HMRC) have officially recognised Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics NAV as software products that will support Making Tax Digital which is fantastic news for our new and existing customers.

Importantly though, updates will only come for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2015 and beyond. If you’re on a version before that, we urgently need to start planning an upgrade.

With a current maintenance agreement for Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, you will be entitled to receive the update and we simply need to plan its implementation. We will have over 350 of these to do so will need to schedule this as soon as we know it's available from Microsoft.

If you’re not on a supported version, please get in contact with us today to understand what you will have to do to be able to submit your VAT return from just next April onwards.

P.S. For those who enjoy the detail, a full overview of Making Tax Digital is available if you click here and you can find the actual regulations by just clicking here.

Training Course: Making Tax Digital with Dynamics

For those who are interested, we'll be running a Dynamics Learning course covering VAT in Microsoft Dynamics NAV / Dynamics 365 Business Central with both Online Webinar & Classroom training options spanning multiple dates. Our MTD course begins in December 2018 and run through January and February. To view the details of this course, click here.