From this April (or in a few days time!), businesses over the VAT threshold should start using the Making Tax Digital service. This means firms turning over more than £85,000 would need to keep their records digitally and use specialist software to directly submit VAT returns to the Taxman's processing servers.
HMRC may have a problem here. We previously reported at the start of this month that only 30,000 businesses had made the mandatory signup - this is out of 1.2 million businesses that are required to do so.Only 2,000 a day were being registered to the service and now around 70,000 are up and running on the service - still falling way short of the required number.
It seems that even accountants are apathetic to the sign-up process - with some software providers reporting only a tiny percentage of number crunchers have registered for their client services. Estimates range at around 2,500 out of 70,000+ accountants in the country.
HMRC has already stated that they will be fair with applying fines for missed deadlines where people have shown a decent attempt to comply with the new regulations.