The MTD Marathon – a race to the finish or a step too far?
When Tom Bickle, my partner in Accountants Therapy crime, called me and said “I’ve had an idea” I felt my usual sense of excitement mixed with dread for what crazy adventure we are going to go on next. But as he explained his plan I found myself increasingly onboard.
“I think we can actually do this” I said.
The idea? Let’s do a whole day continuous conversation about MTD to encourage agents to sign up their clients, get moving and feel more confident (even if still feeling a bit “what’s the point?”).
And, what will make this even better is we will have a 15 minute crossover between guests so they can ask each other questions and continue the discussion rather than it just being a one after the other interview.
Thus began a three-week exercise of reaching out to contacts already known to us and to some we had not met but felt they’d bring a new dimension to the event.
The response was overwhelmingly positive and every half-hour slot between 9am and 4pm filled remarkably quickly. So…a long discussion on MTD IS something people want to get involved with, who would have thought?
The day arrived and I was excited, which is almost embarrassing to say. While I’m sure many readers won’t find the prospect of being stuck to your screen continuously for 8 hours anything amazing, this was 8 hours of continuous webinar presence for Tom and I. Marathon was an excellent name as not only were we planning to “run” for about as long as it would probably take me to run a marathon, we clearly also had friends cheering us along. Two lovely Accountants Therapy members had already worried about us sufficiently enough to pre-send us each an Afternoon Tea package of treats to keep us going.
The Morning
The conversation very appropriately started with two bookkeepers Natasha Everard and Kirsty St John and a discussion on how bookkeepers really shine in the MTD process arose. Are the “benefits” of MTD simply the benefits of good bookkeeping? “A lot of the benefits people talk about aren’t really MTD benefits, they’re bookkeeping benefits.” Said Natasha. “You wont really notice a difference” said Kirsty. “It’s just one more extra report that we need to do.”
Half an hour later Lindsey wicks (ICAEW) and Suzannah Whelan joined us with Suzannah echoing previous thoughts “I started the client communication about MTD a long time ago. I was ready for this the first time around before it got delayed, because to me, as a bookkeeper, I could really see the benefits.”. Lindsey however talked about her previous self employments saying “I had those early worries about what was this was going to look like for my business. But anyway, I went back into the employed world.”. “It sounds like you were getting out of MTD by going back into employment to me.” Said Tom. Lindsey went on to highlight the enormous amount of consultation that goes on in the background involving cross professional body cooperation.
Next came Della Hudson and Samantha Mitcham. Samantha’s focus was on the practical realities of implementation and the fact that nobody will truly know how it feels until submissions start flowing. “We can predict which software clients will choose. We can predict who’ll want us to do the work. But until we’re actually saying to clients, ‘Right, now we need to do it,’ that’s when it gets really interesting.” Della’s focus was on training clients to feel confident enough to deal with quarterly submissions without her involvement “If I can do it one-to-many, and if they can do it themselves, that’s ideal” – a strategy I am also attempting to employ myself.
Nick Moss (TaxCalc) and Stu McEwan (FreeAgent) arrived appropriately dressed for such an important occasion – a full tux and a kilt respectively! Here we heard about improvement in agent preparedness “The biggest change we saw [at Accountex] was the quality of conversations. People know about MTD now.”. Said Stu, and Nick agreed “Everyone who came to the stand feels like they’ve nailed the concept of quarterly reporting.” But added “The questions now are about the finalisation piece”.
Up next was Craig Ogilvie, the Director of MTD at HMRC but he didn’t come alone, surprising us with a plethora of colleagues involved in the MTD rollout – Johnathan Athow, Nick Atkinson, Phillip Stansfield and Sarah Grover. With a focus on the sign up process Craig said “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get the data right… The sign-up process is a very deliberate ploy to make sure we get the tax system right.”
And reflecting on agent engagement, with some nice words to say about the work Accountants Therapy has been doing, he said: “it’s always better to be involved than stand at the side and shout’.
With the thought of moving people to action we finished this section with a 15minute pre-recorded tutorial from Sam Wood walking through the sign up process, screen by screen – a valuable resource available on the Accountants Therapy YouTube channel as an excerpt for anyone who is feeling nervous about the process.
Nick Paddenburg joined us too and reminded us of the campaign for a longer filing deadline, affectionately known as Paddy Time (#PaddyTimeMTD), an important reminder that real-life workflows and practical difficulties remain central to the wider MTD discussion.
Aaron Patrick and Ami Copeland (ICB) brought a new dimension once again. The ICB has consistently been praised for supporting members with MTD and Aaron agreed “Not all institutes are equal. ICB are doing a fantastic job and really supporting their members.”. Ami has seen the benefits of working together “When we put a human face on it, we realise it’s a challenge for all of us and we can do it together” she said.
At this point we took an hour to run our MTD TOGETHER session – an interactive part of the day where members could speak to one another. It was incredible to hear how the discussions had ignited new thoughts and moved some to action already.
The Afternoon
Our afternoon sessions kicked off with Kevin Sefton (Untied) who has been involved in MTD for a long time “The first meeting I had around Making Tax Digital was in 2016, so I’ve been on the journey now for 10 years. I’m quite glad you’ve called it a marathon today because that’s what it largely has been for many of us.” On a positive note he was able to add “What is really pleasing is the change in the relationship with HMRC.” Craig dyer (AAT) was able to talk through some of the support available to AAT members “Every week goes by that there are sessions for AAT members to be part of through CPD and webinars…There’s been an awful lot of opportunity dropping into members’ and students’ inboxes on a weekly basis…It’s definitely been at the forefront of the support that AAT has put in place.”
Next up were two software giants of industry Paul Lodder (Dext) and Chris Downing (Sage). Paul touched on AI’s role saying “AI is helping us move faster” and Chris honed in on resilience in industry saying “At the end of the day, when there is a deadline, you can rely on accountants and bookkeepers to deliver at that deadline” – I’m not quite sure where Tax Advisers sit in that quote, but I’ll let it go for now.
One of the most recognisable voices in the MTD scene, Rebecca Benneyworth joined us next with Gemma Rawcliffe of HMRC. Rebecca talked extensively about some of the difficulties she has seen around implementation: “I think one of the biggest challenges is finding the right software for the right client.” While Gemma was looking again at the collaboration in industry and how working with HMRC has fundamentally changed. “It’s collaboration. It’s working together…This doesn’t work with just MTD staff and the MTD programme. There’s a whole gang of us working under the surface….The turnaround in 12 months has been incredible.”
And into the final sprint we welcomed Grace Hardy and Jourdan French (Apari Pro) with Grace talking through how MTD became a catalyst to assess each client position “we have an internal tax calculator to compare sole trader versus a limited company, and we found that actually a couple of them would be better off, so we did end up incorporating.”. From the software point of view Jourdan spoke about how helpful active feedback has been for Apari Pro and how the main challenges for agents circle around the practicalities “I spend most of my time speaking with accountants and bookkeepers about the workflow challenges and how firms adapt to change”.
The final steps
To round the day off we invited all guests to come back at 4 if they could and one of the final questions of the day asked guests what they would keep and what they would change about MTD.
What surprised me most was how much agreement there was. The things people wanted to keep centred around better record keeping, digital records, visibility of business performance and the increased collaboration between HMRC and industry. The things they would drop were largely complexity: quarterly updates, confusion around finalisation and a system that too often punishes poor behaviour rather than rewarding good behaviour. There was a lot of food for thought in that final hour, just what was needed after eight hours of calorie expenditure.
Looking back over the day I’m immensely proud of the varied mix of guests we were able to bring together and the excellent balance of conversation. While I remain largely against MTD as proposed I strongly believe it’s important we (every corner of industry) help each other to consider the scene and to prepare for it and having heard from bookkeepers, accountants, tax advisers, software representatives, professional body representatives and from HMRC all in one day I think we contributed to that aim. If you missed out, you can catch up on YouTube.
Robyn Milstead CTA 9/6/26
