From 16 February 2024, agents who need to be authorised to represent their clients for VAT must do so in the agent services account (ASA) using the ‘digital handshake’ process.

HMRC said most agents already use the agent services account, one reason for the short notice about the change to the Online Agent Authorisation (OAA) service.

This is part of HMRC’s modernisation programme and was necessary due to legacy IT issues which meant the current process had to be modernised as ‘a number of online services available to agents, many of which are now nearing the end of their lifespan’.

HMRC is starting to move all the functions from these legacy services into a single point of access – ASA. This is designed to to make using online services simpler and more consistent across all areas of work.