Making Tax Digital for VAT should be delayed by at least one year and the government should wait until April 2022 before extending it to other taxes so lessons can be learned from implementing the initiative.

These are the recommendations of the House of Lords’ Economic Affairs Committee’s report, Making Tax Digital for VAT: treating small businesses fairly.

The lords considered many businesses would not be ready for the introduction of MTD for VAT in April 2019 and that HMRC had inadequately considered the needs and concerns of smaller businesses.

The committee welcomed attempts to modernise HMRC’s systems and increase efficiencies for taxpayers, but remained unconvinced by the Revenue’s claims that digitalisation would narrow the tax gap by reducing errors in submissions.

The report concluded that neither …

Too many people have to fill in inheritance tax forms, and the process is complex and old fashioned.

In the first part of its simplification review of the tax, the Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) received more than 3,500 responses to its call for evidence, far more than in any previous review. Many respondents said they felt they were being asked to complete complicated forms even when the relative who had died had left only a small amount.

Although inheritance tax is payable on less than 5% of the estates of the 570,000 people who die in the UK each year, about half of the families have to fill in the forms.

The report highlights the …

Some employers are having problems giving tax relief on pension scheme members’ contributions, HMRC …