Making Tax Digital (MTD) and Sage 200 / 50

Background and Current Situation

Making Tax Digital (MTD) is HMRC’s move to digitise tax. This means that as of 1st April 2019, UK businesses above the VAT threshold of £85,000 will be required to submit VAT returns using accounting software, where you’ll no longer be able to submit manually through the HMRC gateway.

Please refer to HMRC VAT Notice 700/22: Making Tax Digital for VAT which is a great source of information on the topic for companies of all shapes and sizes.

If you are using Sage 50c (only available on subscription) then you can upgrade to a MTD compliant version of Sage 50c FOC under your subscription agreement. If you are running a perpetual Sage 50 Accounts licence with Sagecover Extra or no Sagecover at all, you can either switch to Sage 50c subscription or you can purchase a stand alone MTD module for Sage 50 for £25 + VAT per month.

With regard to Sage 200, the Spring 2018 release and all subsequent releases, are MTD compliant and can be connected to the HMRC software for digital VAT submissions. The new functionality also now supports group submissions, which wasn’t part of the legacy HMRC connector.

All customers are entitled to the latest version of Sage 200 under their annual maintenance agreement and both Smith Cooper and Sage strongly recommend upgrading your Sage 200 system in advance of the Making Tax Digital deadline.

However, we understand that not all customers will be in a position to upgrade before April 2019, which is why Sage has created the MTD Submission module. The module provides customers on pre-2018 versions, who are not able to upgrade before the MTD deadline, the ability to comply with the legislation in the short term.

If you would like to request a quote for either or both options or simply require further information, please contact 01332 959008 email sage@smithcooper.co.uk