by Springboard IT
Unfortunately, an issue has been identified which is impacting the ability of some MTD for VAT customers to submit a return.
In order to enable a fix to be delivered, the ‘Return Submission’ element of MTD for VAT requires shuttering. As a result, it is currently not possible for customers or agents to submit a VAT return through the MTD service.
HMRC are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible and expect the full service to return on the morning of Thursday 18th March.
HMRC VAT MTD Service Availability – Planned Downtime 14 November to 16 November
Scheduled maintenance to the Making Tax Digital (MTD) VAT service will take place between 4.30pm Saturday 14th November until 5pm Monday 16th November.
During this time customers will be unable to:
submit returns
view previous submissions and payment details
Upcoming scheduled maintenance notice
Due to HMRC scheduled maintenance the Making Tax Di gital service will be unavailable from 4.00pm Saturday 16 May until 5.00pm Monday 18 May.
During this period, the following MTD for VAT services will be unavailable:
• Submit returns
• view your previous submissions and payment details
• set up or cancel and amend existing direct debits
• review and update any business details
Mr Sunak said: ‘To help businesses pay people and keep them in work I’m deferring the next quarter of VAT payments, that means no business will pay any VAT from now until the end of June. ‘And you’ll have until the end of the financial year to repay those bills. That’s a direct injection of over £30 billion of cash to businesses equivalent to 1.5% of GDP.’
For VAT, the deferral will apply from 20 March 2020 until 30 June 2020.
This is an automatic offer with no applications required. Businesses will not need to make a VAT payment during this period. Taxpayers will be given until the end of the 2020 to 2021 tax year to pay any liabilities that have accumulated during the deferral period. VAT refunds and reclaims will be paid by the government as normal.
Other items in the package include:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-to-employers-and-businesses-about-covid-19/covid-19-support-for-businesses
HMRC have told us, they are planning scheduled maintenance from 17.30 on Saturday 14th March to 17.00 on Monday the 16th March.
Making tax Digital VAT services that will be unavailable are:
• Agent Service Subscription
• Agent Authorisation
• Submission of returns
• Business Tax Account View and Change
• Direct Debit
Between 11.59 on Saturday the 14th March to 2.00 on Sunday 15th March the Sign up service will be unavailable.
We have been notified of the following period of scheduled maintenance taking place for the VAT MTD service and the ITSA MTD service.
Saturday 22nd February to Sunday 23rd February
During the maintenance period on Saturday 22nd February 2020 between 11.59pm and 06.00am the following day (Sunday 23th February 2020) some services will be unavailable. You will be unable to:
Agents will be unable to access any agent services.
HMRC would like to personally apologise for the service issues that many of you have reported over the last week. Unfortunately, they encountered a number of unrelated problems, that resulted in services being taken offline as a precaution. They are continuing to investigate to ensure that these issues do not occur again, however, investigations so far have confirmed that there are no problems with the capacity of Making Tax Digital or any other service.
You have no doubt started to receive guidance from HMRC on what you may have to do in response to a no deal Brexit with respect to VAT.
You may also be wondering how your purchase of Springboard IT’s MTD solution may be affected by any changes. The answer is that you will be able continue using our software for VAT submissions after a no deal Brexit.
We have received our own guidance as to how our software will need to change in the event of a no deal Brexit. It is very minor, the text on our displays against certain boxes needs to be changed to reflect the changing use of each box as explained in the HMRC guidance.
| Box number | What it will need to change to say |
| Box 2 | VAT due in this period on imports accounted for through postponed accounting |
| Box 4 | VAT reclaimed in this period on purchases and other inputs (including imports) |
| Box 8 | Total value of all exports of goods, excluding any VAT |
| Box 9 | Total value of all imports of goods, excluding any VAT |
This is the only change we would need to make. Should it be required you will receive an automatic update in due course reflecting those changes.
If you import to or export from the UK you may require to change how you calculate the values that go into the 4 affected boxes. That is something your accountant will be able to guide you on.
The Government guidance can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/accounting-for-import-vat
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/complete-your-vat-return-to-account-for-import-vat-in-a-no-deal-brexit
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-fill-in-and-submit-your-vat-return-vat-notice-70012
Due to HMRC scheduled maintenance all VAT MTD services will be unavailable between midnight and 8am on Sunday the 13th October 2019.
All MTD services will be affected, you will receive a 500 internal server error when trying to get information from HMRC.
You can find more information at any time here: Making Tax Digital for VAT: service availability and issues
14 September 2019 (Intermittent between 4.30pm – 5.30pm)
16 September 2019 (Midnight – 2.00am)
21 September 2019 (4.00pm) – 23 September 2019 (4.00pm)