The Government has been urged to take \u2018primary responsibility\u2019 for Making Tax Digital (MTD) in terms of raising awareness of potential cyber-crime and assisting Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with clearer compliance information.<\/p>\n
The comments come from the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT) amidst fears that making MTD mandatory from April 2018 will cause a catalogue of financial and administrative complications for smaller firms.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Mike Cherry, policy director at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), warned that MTD was \u201ccreating a perfect storm\u201d for SMEs. He suggested that HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) should consider \u201ca revised deadline of 2025\u201d for the game-changing MTD project.<\/p>\n
Now, the ATT has raised further concerns that HMRC\u2019s speedy approach to MTD will throw smaller firms into unfamiliar territory too quickly \u2013 and leave many vulnerable to cyber-crime threats.<\/p>\n
Yvette Nunn, Co-chair of ATT\u2019s Technical Steering Group, said: \u201cThere are real practical concerns about the security risks and the potential for businesses becoming victims of cyber-crime.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf taxpayers who are running businesses have to use their phones or laptops to keep details of all their business transactions, there is a major risk of data being accessed maliciously.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur experience suggests that many businesses are not sufficiently cyber-savvy. They are unprepared for having to keep their data safe in a digital world.<\/p>\n
\u201cForcing people down the digital route when they are unprepared for it could be putting them at the highest risk of being targeted by cyber-crime and fraud.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe that if HMRC is taking away the element of choice from a taxpayer over how they keep their business records and whether they engage digitally with HMRC, it needs to take the primary responsibility for educating taxpayers on cyber security.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Government has been urged to take \u2018primary responsibility\u2019 for Making Tax Digital (MTD) in terms of raising awareness of potential cyber-crime and assisting Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) with clearer compliance information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1595,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}