AGENT SERVICES ACCOUNT. AUTHORISING CLIENTS

MTD for VAT ASA Account. Mixed information and struggling to authorise clients to file their return.

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Our practice has recently signed up for the agent services account (ASA) pilot, and therefor our old goverment gateway is redundant for filing VAT returns.

We have been able to create our account, and link it to our old gateway so that our current clients are transferred over. This seemed to work fine (Although there is no way to view a list of our clients on the new ASA).

We now need to file a number of VAT returns that have a deadline for the end of the month however, we cannot do this until the new account is up and running! 

After watching the HMRC/Quickbooks webinar it appeared that we needed to authorise each VAT client individually through the ASA, and they would receive a link to their email address to confirm this. This then sent our clients a link where they had to create their own HMRC logon. This was not the case in the webinar which is why i presume that I have gone wrong somewhere along the line. 

I have already made the relevant changes to our software (sage) to update the details to the new gateway and authorise for MTD submissions.

Each place i look for help I get told different things. Primarily I need a solution to file VAT returns for my clients as we have 9 working days till the end of the month. 

Any help, advice or guidance will be greatly appreciated as this whole pilot seems a bit of a misleading mess! Many thanks in advance.

Replies (12)

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By Moonbeam
15th Feb 2019 17:13

I have no help for you unfortunately but I am just grateful that I have never used my new ASA account.
It seems as if there will be hundreds of people in your situation so that should help on the appeals side.

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By acceje
15th Feb 2019 17:14

The old gateway should still be open until you join the pilot scheme for each individual client (sign up on gov.uk per HMRC Talking Points webinar). I've opened my Agent Services Account but I still use my old gateway to file VAT returns as I haven't joined the pilot scheme for any of my clients.

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Replying to acceje:
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By lewisdolman1996
18th Feb 2019 09:20

Yes that is the case however as I have joined the Pilot scheme i'm under the impression that this stops the facility to use the old gateway?
Hopefully getting a call of the revenue regarding this today, will post any updates.

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Replying to lewisdolman1996:
By Duggimon
18th Feb 2019 11:07

lewisdolman1996 wrote:

Yes that is the case however as I have joined the Pilot scheme i'm under the impression that this stops the facility to use the old gateway?

Fortunately, that is not the case. You won't be able to file returns for the clients that you have individually registered for MTD, but the gateway remains usable as an agent, and will do so indefinitely.

Once MTD is mandatory, our practice will still be using the gateway for all those under £85,000 turnover, around 1/3 of all our VAT clients, if what you had said was true, this wouldn't be possible.

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Replying to Duggimon:
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By lewisdolman1996
18th Feb 2019 11:34

Yes sorry i should have said stops the facility to file vat returns over the threshold.
We think we have cracked it anyway. Seems all clients must either log into their existing, or create a new government gateway for their business to be able to authorise an agent to submit VAT returns on their behalf under the new ASA.

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
15th Feb 2019 17:21

I think the trouble is the tech is moving quicker than the guidance so no-one has a flipping clue what they are doing.

I haven't been brave enough to even pilot one, let alone move the lot across.

What I can tell you is the main thing is to ensure your clients pay on time, so manual payments if you cant get filed and the DD's don't get activated.

Quite frankly id just print out a comp and post it to the dozy XXXers myself if you cant get it working. Stop wasting your time!

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Replying to ireallyshouldknowthisbut:
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By lewisdolman1996
18th Feb 2019 09:22

Yes i agree. Seems as if everything is moving faster that the guidance at the minute. Hopefully the revenue can shed some light on the situation today and i can post some updates for people in a similar situation.

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By johnhemming
15th Feb 2019 17:57

It is entirely possible that you have not yet signed your clients up to the pilot scheme.

It is difficult to say from what you have written.

As I understand it (although I tend to deal directly with VAT registered legal entities rather than through an ASA) merely signing a client up to your ASA does not result in them joining the pilot scheme. Although I understand the MTD APIs inside out I am not yet fully up to speed with the ASA.

What I do know is that it is possible to authorise a client through OAuth without them being in the pilot scheme. That is the thing you did through the Sage software.

There are APIs that enable checking the status of clients with various "scopes", but I don't know who other than me has written user facing routines for these.

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Replying to johnhemming:
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By lewisdolman1996
18th Feb 2019 09:25

Thanks for your response. I know that i have signed up to the pilot scheme, but no i haven't signed up my clients individually, only linked them from the old gateway. Does it sound correct that the individual clients would have to create their own gateway logon to sign up? Or am i getting it totally wrapped round my neck.

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Replying to lewisdolman1996:
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By johnhemming
18th Feb 2019 12:41

It is logical that each individual client would have to be signed up to the pilot scheme individually even if it is done by an agent.

That is because the mere fact that a client is a client of an agent does not necessarily require that they join MTD.

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By fellowcraft
15th Feb 2019 19:43

So, what's the point of having an ASA which doesn't show who is and isn't your client?

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Replying to fellowcraft:
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By johnhemming
15th Feb 2019 20:03

When people get access to the Agents API MTD software then they will have that sort of information.
https://github.com/hmrc/agent-authorisation-api

"github" wrote:
The API also allows the agent to check the status of authorisations already requested and query active or inactive relationships.
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