Consultation outcome

Making Tax Digital: Voluntary pay as you go

This consultation has concluded

Download the full outcome

Making Tax Digital: Voluntary pay as you go - Summary of responses

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Detail of outcome

Respondents were generally supportive of the opportunity to make voluntary payments throughout the year. The majority wanted voluntary payments to be easily and speedily repayable. HMRC agrees and will only not make a repayment where a liability is about to become due and the customer failed to pay on time in the previous 12 months. HMRC also agrees that early repayments is better left until Making Tax Digital for Business is fully embedded.

There were some concerns over the proposal that voluntary payments would be allocated against tax liabilities as they arose by HMRC instead of by the customer, and whether HMRC systems would ensure this was carried out in the customer’s interest. HMRC will proceed with its proposal on payment allocation. We believe this will reduce the need for customers to have to access their digital tax account to tell HMRC where payments should go. We will ensure that robust allocation rules are in place and publicly available.


Original consultation

Summary

A consultation on options for customers who must keep digital records to make and manage voluntary payments.

This consultation ran from
to

Consultation description

Background

At Budget 2015, the Government set out the vision for a transformed tax system and in December 2015 launched the Making Tax Digital Roadmap, outlining more detail about what the transformed tax system will look like by 2020.

Because of the scales of these changes there is a lot we need to ask people about. We have published 6 consultation documents, each focusing on specific customer groups or elements of the Making Tax Digital reforms.

Focus of this consultation

This consultation

  • looks at options for customers covered by the requirement for digital record-keeping to make and manage their voluntary payments
  • considers how voluntary payments will be allocated across a customer’s different taxes
  • explores the best way of dealing with the repayment of voluntary payments

It also broaches the opportunity regular updating provides to make earlier repayments.

This consultation will be of interest to all businesses, the self-employed and landlords, as well as agents, business representative bodies, software developers and insolvency practitioners.

Documents

Making Tax Digital: Voluntary pay as you go

Request an accessible format.
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email different.format@hmrc.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.
Published 15 August 2016
Last updated 31 January 2017 + show all updates
  1. Summary of responses published.

  2. First published.