untied's Making Tax Digital Confidence Tracker monitors the awareness over time of the mandation of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD ITSA), the new way of tax reporting for self-employed people and landlords from 2024.
These changes will require in-year reporting and the use of new software to file digital records. It will be mandated for between four and six million people from April 2024.
Tracker results
The first untied monthly tracker (November 2021) revealed that slightly over a quarter (27%) of the self-employed individuals and 25% of landlords questioned said they were either extremely or very aware of what is coming up. Almost half (46%) of self-employed and 50% of landlords revealed they were not at all aware of MTD for Income Tax.
In January 2022 figures revealed that there was marginally more awareness amongst the self-employed around the changes that will come into force in 2024. Whilst the same percentage of self-employed taxpayers (27%) were either extremely or very aware of the new Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment reporting rules, more individuals (27% vs 17%) were 'somewhat aware’ than in November 2021. And fewer people were ‘not at all aware’ (31% vs 46%). This means that the overall awareness score rose to 40.8 (vs 34.0 last time).
When it comes to accountants, awareness is higher. Almost 59% are either extremely aware or very aware of the forthcoming changes with 11% saying they are not at all aware of the forthcoming Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment changes. Furthermore, 45% report they are extremely/very confident that they know what they need to do to be ready for it, with slightly more than one in five (21%) disclosing that they aren’t at all confident or they just don’t know.
However in March 2022 there was a limited amount of confidence amongst accountants that the Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment (MTS ITSA) changes, due to come into force in 2024, will be a success.
Over a third (36%) were not at all or slightly confident, followed by the same number again (36%) who were only ‘somewhat confident’. Less than three in ten (27.5%) were very or extremely confident. It seems that professionals in the west midlands are most pessimistic (38.46% in this region say they were not at all confident) compared with 6.25% in the east of England. The east of England also had the most positive accountants – one in two (50%) say they are either very or extremely confident that MTD ITSA will be a success when it launches.
untied is the first end to end app recognised by HMRC for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, and is available to end users and to advisers and agents. Find out more.
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