I am afraid we cannot check directly with HMRC, they will quote data protections and the fact that I am not authorised as your agent. You could call yourself to check. Please be reassured that HMRC are not fining people who make a reasonable attempt to submit their VAT return on time (which you are clearly trying to do as you are reading this). They DO however expect you to pay your liabilities on time there is no special dispensation for late PAYMENT of your VAT liability.
If you open the spreadsheet you used to submit the return you should see this information in our MTD Display:
The information returned are references sent back by HMRC and cannot be made up by us.
You can also check on any spreadsheet with MTD enabled by hovering over the MTD Menu and select the VAT Details option:
This brings up a list of all the VAT Registration numbers used on the machine. If the column “Submissions” is ticked we have recorded a successful submission.
If you highlight a VAT number by clicking on the left hand column, then right click to bring up the context menu you can view submissions. This displays all the submissions that we have recorded for that VAT number.
If you have data in the Form Bundle column I would be very confident that you have successfully submitted your return. this is the HMRC confirmation code that they return to us and is your proof to them that you have submitted a return.
If ANY of this suggests that your VAT has not been submitted then please call and we can do a remote support session to watch the submission process, or repeat the steps you have already taken to understand why you may have got an error when asking for a list of liabilities. What happens if you select obligations?
In terms of your next VAT Return you can do a Save As to get a new spreadsheet. The only other step is that you need to clear the VAT Period that we record behind the scenes. That is done by selecting the “Clear VAT Period” option from the MTD Hover Menu:
