Future of using bridging products

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Do we know what the timeframe for bridging products will be - are we likely to find them disallowed if MTD moves onto business reporting? I know we are all at sea with timeframes but how are you all approaching this situation for manual clients who are going to need to make a move to excel or accounting software? Are you looking at bridging being a temporary measure or a potential long term solution? Are HMRC currently supporting the view Excel will be suitable in the long term?

 

 

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By Duggimon
06th Feb 2019 11:05

HMRC have never said Excel won't be suitable in the future, at least not since they revised their definition to include Excel in the first place.

Other than that, we don't know. There's no particular reason we know of so far that would prevent bridging software being unsuitable when the MTD requirements change to include more data being submitted, but there's no API for that yet so whether that remains the case remains to be seen.

For us, bridging software is the most painless way to transition a large number of our clients and that's true whether it's a one year stopgap or an indefinite solution, so that's what we're using. While there's all this uncertainty there's a risk in jumping into things with both feet.

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By Matrix
06th Feb 2019 11:23

I am telling clients it is a temporary solution. I was stung advising before - advised them to move from Sage to VT then saying no that doesn't work oh yes it does etc. or you can't use Sage unless you upgrade, oh yes you can here is bridging software for £40 which is a lot less than Sage will charge to upgrade.

Everything keeps changing.

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
06th Feb 2019 14:46

Who knows!

The whole point of bridging was to solve the 1001 "but cant cant get software to do this" questions.

But once in, its very hard to remove unless the 1001 issues are solved, and then encoded into every single VAT filing product. Which is not going to happen.

My take on this is they will get MTD in, if its this year or next. Trumpet the amazing digital british economy (or whats left of it) and move on.

The stats will come in 3 years later that, look! no more VAT was collected. Ooops. "Lessons learned" lame old excuse trotted out etc etc etc.

No-one is going to be interested after that.

See also iXBRL.

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