During HMRC’s webinar, opportunities were given to respond to a series of polling questions on aspects of the MTD policy.

The 153 people attending the webinar were first asked what threshold they believed was appropriate for businesses to be given an extra year to prepare.

Around 78% of the respondents believed the threshold should be higher than £20,000, 12% thought £20,000 was substantial and 9% said it should be £15,000.

Another issue concerning timing was whether the one month window to complete quarterly returns was long enough, with 71% saying that it was too short and not one respondent believing that this was too much time.

Around 61% said that the costs their businesses would incur the most would be time familiarising themselves with MTD and the policies.

Another main concern raised in the webinar was the effect moving to digitalised tax returns would have on the elderly or other people unable to use online services. HMRC responded to these questions by assuring people that telephone services and home visits from HMRC would still be available to help, despite this people still seemed unconvinced.

The webinar revealed that HMRC would not be providing any free software or apps as ‘all products will be provided by commercial software providers, including free to use products.’

Regarding the publication on software services, HMRC said: ‘We will not be publishing a list of authorised suppliers, but we will be publishing a list of software applications, and a brief description of what the product does, as well as the business type (or size of agent if applicable) the product is aimed at.’

Registration to Webinars and events for Making Tax Digital is here.