Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Businesses project is HMRC’s ambitious project to make the tax system advanced and efficient. After much consideration about the rate and scale of changes, the government has recently postponed the Making Tax Digital scheme to April 2019.

Issuers listed on stock markets in the EU are governed by the European Transparency Directive. This directive requires such listed companies to prepare and submit financial reports in a European Single Electronic Format (ESEF).

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has confirmed plans to beta test its Making Tax Digital (MTD) reporting system in April, with up to 100 testers due to be selected for an initial pilot ahead of a more significant trial in the autumn.

Computers revolutionised the world of information decades ago. ‘Interactivity’, however has been a more recent phenomenon. Hitherto, data collection by Regulators has always been in ‘non-interactive’ formats like PDF, Word, etc. This scenario is changing as we go to press.

A step to modernize the tax system was taken when the HMRC identified a tax gap of close of 8 billion between tax receivable and actual tax collected, owing to taxpayer errors. The roadmap to achieving this is the Making Tax Digital for Business (MTDfB) project.

All corporate tax payers in the UK need to file their CT600 form with HMRC including the Accounts, in iXBRL format. There are several ways corporations can fulfill this requirement including, in-house, getting it done through the Accountants/Tax Advisors, or outsourcing to managed tagging service providers like DataTracks.