[GNC] UK specific: any progress on MTD (Making Tax Difficult) ?

[Maf. King]

On Friday, 3 August 2018 17:17:46 BST Mike Evans wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Jul 2018 14:10:46 +0100
> 
> Alain D D Williams <addw at phcomp.co.uk> wrote:
> > This is the UK government's edict any business with a turnover of more
> > than
> > £85k/year will *need* to use accounting software and use that to submit
> > tax
> > returns - from April 2019 (& all above £10k from April 2020).
> > 
> > https://www.gov.uk/government/news/hmrc-publishes-more-information-on-maki
> > ng-tax-digital
> > 
> > This was discussed here some time ago, but was inconclusive.
> 
> This was discussed briefly on the devel list but judging by the lack of
> response I guess that there are very few UK users that are affected.
> 
> Inserting this into the GnuCash code I think is unrealistic for the
> apparently few users and specific use-case.  One could, I suppose, use a
> Python to extract the relevant data and interact with the HMRC API as a
> separate application that has access to the GnuCash data book. I imagine
> extracting the required data should be (relatively) easy, and (simply)
> interfacing with HMRC is all that's required from there.
> 
> I signed up as a developer and have written some python that gets through
> the oauth2 part. I'm now trying to interface with the "Individual Tax" API.
> Just getting various errors at the moment but that's better than yesterday.
>  I've no idea yet as to what data is required to push to the API, I can't
> find any relevant info.
> 
> This should be on the devel list perhaps.
> 
> Mike E

It will affect me, but I'm not in a position to do much about it or work on a 
solution, and am certainly not on the -devel list.  I need to talk to my 
accountant later in the year about this.  My VAT affairs are pretty 
straightforward and I've always done my own returns.  I might have to move the 
business books away from GC if there is no alternative.

it does seem to me from reading the link provided in the OP that a GC report 
or two feeding into a spreadsheet containing the "api magic" HMRC talk about 
might be a way forward.  GC doesn't have to directly submit the return to 
HMRC, if I understood the notes properly.

Maf.