Only 3.3% of the people who have been dragged into the first batch of Making Tax Digital requirements have attended one of HMRC’s explanatory webinars. No one is ready for the coming carnage…
Making Tax Digital requires in-scope individuals to move from using the traditional Self Assessment portal and instead keep digital records in HMRC-recognised software and submit four quarterly updates per year, followed by a Final Declaration. It is dragging increasing numbers of self-filers into the system:
HMRC have been running – and advertising – webinars for different groups on the system since 10 April last year. Guido’s FOI Unit has found that up to 2 April this year there were only 15,069 attendees of any webinar for landlords and joint property owners, and only 13,436 attendees of any webinar for sole traders or landlords without an accountant or bookkeeper. That is 28,505 attendees in total which is 3.3% of this year’s additions to the system…
It is also 0.98% of the total 2.9 million to join the system by the end of the Parliament. HMRC says: “We are continuing to facilitate MTD educational webinars and have events currently scheduled up to the end of June 2026.” After that you’re on your own…
Starmer spoke to Nick Robinson for the Today Programme on Polanski’s criticism of the Golders Green police officers:
“I want everybody just to imagine what it might be like. You’re trying to arrest someone who has already attacked two people and has no regard for life. We know that tasers were fired. I know from my own experience with the police, that there are only two shots in a taser, and once you’ve shot them, there’s nothing left. There’s a guy on the ground, he’s got a rucksack on. And I don’t know what was going through the mind of those officers, but if I was there, I’d be thinking, he’s going to detonate something. He’s going to blow me up and everybody around here. In those circumstances, I think you can quite see why what could have gone through their mind is, we need to do whatever we can to disable this guy…
Now, when I then see Zack Polanski come out and retweet or support a criticism of that, I think it’s disgraceful… He’s not fit to lead any political party.”