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Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

This is from the same government that requires companies submit tax information via a special spreadsheet which has 7 boxes for the 7 numbers they need... But rather than make a webform with 7 textboxes, they make a private JSON API which only approved software vendors have access to, and you then need to use a third party to send your spreadsheet via the private API that only the third party is approved to access...

[1]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-fill-in-and-submit-your-v...

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The API is open to anyone who can demonstrate compliance via the test API. Approval takes 10 working days and there is no cost to the developer. There are currently 544 approved vendors.

The barrier to entry is intentional but low. HMRC specifically does not want people typing numbers into webforms, for perfectly legitimate reasons.

https://developer.service.hmrc.gov.uk/guides/vat-mtd-end-to-...

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

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digita...

> for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Could you elaborate?

See the third link, but the short answer is that businesses that keep digital tax records make fewer errors on their returns and pay more in tax. HMRC's analysis suggests that the transition to mandatory digital accounting will reduce underpayments by nearly £400m per year, without imposing disproportionate costs on businesses. The API functionally mandates some level of digitisation, but it's extremely flexible - small businesses can use bridging software to maintain their existing spreadsheet-based workflow, while larger businesses can integrate the API into a bespoke system. What HMRC are really trying to rule out is pen-and-paper bookkeeping.

> businesses that keep digital tax records [...] pay more in tax.

Conversely, businesses that only earn £50 a year probably can have their accounts done in 5 minutes on a napkin, which is why those businesses are less likely to use accounting software and pay less tax on average...

Forcing them to use accounting software won't suddenly make them earn more or pay more taxes. In fact, if the effort of running a tiny business goes up too much, many of them will just shut down.

Businesses with turnover of less than £85,000 are completely exempt from filing VAT returns. Self-employed people with trading income of less than £30,000 will remain exempt from Making Tax Digital for income tax and can continue to file returns using the web form or a paper form.

I guess it's to reduce the validation workload at their end. They'd rather receive numbers generated and validated by a piece of software, rather than numbers that may or may not make sense.

It doesn't seem to help much against fraud. Nearly all bits of accounting software can be manipulated to add/remove amounts from the totals. And remember the government normally only gets to see the totals.

It might help slightly against accidental typos in the 7 numbers. But I really doubt that the transferring of 7 numbers from one bit of software to another once per year is a substantial contributor to accounting errors, when you compare that to hundreds or thousands of invoices/bills that need to be entered into the accountancy software.

I get it, it feels like a regression to me too, but there is method to the madness, their MTD idea is that you don't just plop numbers into some boxes, that they are a product of accountancy software (so that they're accurate).

I've seen some tools bypass this and still allow you to input numbers manually but just via the vendor API.

Yeah I wonder whether MTD has had the intended effect. I've used https://www.comsci.co.uk/100PcVatFreeBridge to submit VAT returns. It takes a spreadsheet as input, and there's no way to validate that the spreadsheet came from some accounting software or used any useful calculations. The user can just create a spreadsheet and enter numbers by hand.

And this is still miles better than everything else out there. In Spain this is hopeless to do yourself, you _must_ have an accountant on retainer for even the simplest of stuff.

It's worse than that. My wife's sarl must file every quarter, in mind-boggling detail, and is mandated to have both labour and fiscal assessors. It took nearly a year to fire an employee who stole €6000 and maliciously crippled operations.

Don't ever operate in Spain.

I've only been a private individual and an auto-entrepreneur (mini-company) in France, but as far as I know everything is fully digital on publicly available websites that anyone can create an account on and submit the necessary information.

Spain is a lost cause in so many regards...

It's annoying, but at least there are free options. Here's one I've used many times:

https://www.comsci.co.uk/100PcVatFreeBridge

Looks like open source clients are available:

https://github.com/cybermaggedon/gnucash-uk-vat

At least, in principle - no idea how well they work.

Edit, I am mistaken, see reply below.

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The problem is not client availability, the problem is that the API itself is only available to approved vendors.

Certainly for most businesses it will be more convenient to just use the built-in functionality of the accounting software that they almost certainly already use, but for those who really want to do it themselves, there is a process (described in the README of the Gnucash client) for getting credentials.

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