Awareness of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment changes creeps up

The latest figures in untied’s Making Tax Digital Confidence Tracker reveal that there is marginally more awareness amongst the self-employed around the changes that will come into force in 2024.

Whilst the same percentage of self-employed taxpayers (27%) are either extremely or very aware of the new Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment reporting rules, more individuals (27% vs 17%) are’ somewhat aware’ than in November 2021. And fewer people are ‘not at all aware’ (31% vs 46%). This means that the overall awareness score has risen to 40.8 (vs 34.0 last time).

Kevin Sefton, CEO, untied commented: “The introduction of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax will require in-year reporting and the use of new software to file digital records. It will be compulsory for between four and six million people from April 2024. Our tracker, which monitors the awareness over time of the new way of tax reporting from 2024, shows that awareness amongst the self-employed is starting to creep up. I’m actually surprised that awareness is so high.

"Given that HMRC is in a very early pilot of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, we speculate whether this score indicates confusion between the different Making Tax Digital initiatives. We are seeing a lot of marketing about “getting ready for Making Tax Digital” without making any distinction between MTD for Income Tax, and MTD for VAT which is being rolled to businesses turning over under £85k from April 2022. Further research will aim to uncover this. The next wave will focus on accountants so it will be interesting to see what those results will say.”

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* Research conducted by FindOutNow, w/c 22 November, updated w/c 10 January 2022.

How aware are you of the forthcoming Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment changes? (Self-employed individuals)