Tax & Compliance

VAT Returns & Making Tax Digital

MTD for Income Tax brought roughly 780,000 taxpayers into quarterly reporting from April 2026, with thresholds falling to £30,000 in 2027 and £20,000 in 2028. For an affected client, contact frequency moves from once a year to four times a year. Very few practices hired four times the staff to match.

Accountancy practices
UK businesses

Discuss this service Engagement models

The problem

A four-fold increase in cycles, with the same headcount

The technical work in a quarterly update is not difficult. The volume is. Each cycle brings a records chase, a bookkeeping catch-up, a reconciliation, a submission and a client communication — repeated across every client in scope, four times a year, against a hard deadline.

HMRC brought around 780,000 taxpayers into MTD for Income Tax from April 2026.
The threshold falls to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028, widening scope each year.
A third of accountants reported they were not ready for the first deadline.
Quarterly obligations do not replace the annual return — they sit on top of it.

At a glance

Service line: Tax & Compliance
Delivered for: Accountancy practices and UK businesses
Typical cadence: Quarterly — Aligned to VAT stagger and MTD quarterly periods, with an internal buffer before each deadline. Monthly — For repayment traders and clients on monthly returns. Annual — End-of-period statements and final declarations at the close of the tax year.
Engagement models: Available per job, on ad-hoc hours, or through a dedicated resource. Compare models.

Scope

What we run

Scope is agreed in writing before work starts and reviewed at each service review. Anything outside it is quoted separately rather than absorbed quietly and invoiced later.

VAT compliance

Standard, cash accounting, flat rate, annual accounting and margin scheme returns
Partial exemption calculations and annual adjustments
Reverse charge on construction services and imported services
Postponed VAT accounting and import VAT reconciliation
VAT control account reconciliation to the ledger before every submission
Error correction, voluntary disclosure and VAT652 preparation support

MTD for Income Tax

Quarterly update preparation and submission through your MTD-compatible software
Digital records maintenance meeting the digital link requirements
End-of-period statement and final declaration preparation
Client-by-client scope assessment against the qualifying income thresholds
Deadline tracker with escalation before each quarterly window closes

Cycle management

Records chasing on your behalf, under your brand, on an agreed escalation ladder
Exception reporting on clients at risk of missing a deadline
Submission log with evidence of every filing, retained for your records

Software

Platforms we work in for this service

We work inside your existing systems under named user accounts. If your stack is not listed, tell us — we will confirm honestly whether we can support it immediately or need a ramp-up period.

Xero
QuickBooks
Sage
FreeAgent
TaxCalc
IRIS Elements
Capium
Bridging software

The boundary

What stays with your firm

This matters more than the task list. A delivery partner that blurs this line creates regulatory exposure for you, so we state it explicitly on every engagement.

Yours, always

The client engagement and engagement letter
Professional judgement and final review
Sign-off, submission authority and the fee
Client advice and the client relationship

Ours

Preparation, processing and documentation
Internal second-person review before release
Turnaround against the agreed timetable
Rework at our cost where the error is ours

Questions

VAT & MTD — what firms ask

All FAQs

Do you submit to HMRC directly?

Only if you instruct us to, through your agent credentials and your software. Many firms prefer that we prepare and reconcile everything and that final submission stays with a named person in the practice. Both work.

Can you handle the records chasing?

Yes, and for most firms this is the single biggest saving. We chase under your brand from your mailbox, on an escalation schedule you define, and hand you an exception list of the clients who genuinely need a partner's phone call.

Services that usually move together

Most firms start with one service line. These are the ones that most often follow.

See the full picture

Talk to us about vat & mtd.

Bring a real example — a live job, a difficult client file, a cycle you are behind on. A concrete case tells you far more about a provider than a capability slide ever will.

Book a scoping call See how we work

What to expect

No obligation and no minimum commitment to talk
A written proposal within five working days
A paid pilot before any long-term arrangement

Prefer email? hello@b4es.co.uk