Can you provide a little more detail as to the background? Is it just the one week in March they're furloughed for?
Guidance + Legislation seems to suggest HMRC are ignoring non-working days, which begs an interesting question of when they're furloughed from. If a Mon-Fri employee is furloughed at the end of the week, do you claim from the Saturday or the Monday? (We're going with Saturday as policy, but intrigued in other perspectives?)
Their employment is not taxable due to the international treaty which founded the supranational organisation they work at - stating that employees would not be subject to UK Income Tax/NI requirements.
However, they are a standard UK citizen, and as such would presumably have some form of liability on other earnings - the question is whether that would be at PA->BR or additional rate.
Update for anyone interested: HMRC have now admitted this has been a known issue for the last 3 months (they just didn't tell the VAT helpline or MTD unit), with a fix scheduled for Monday.
The issue was something to do with the codes they use to identify specific VAT periods for firms - alphanumeric codes were processing fine, but some firms have (for a reason known only to HMRC) purely numeric keys, and these seem to be at the heart of the problem.
not sure where to find this error code. QBO doesn't show it (unless I'm looking in the wrong place). Neither does Easy MTD VAT. Also just tried VAT Direct and got a never-before-seen "you cannot access client data at the moment" error message on HMRC when attempting to authorise - underneath states "Agents are currently not able to authorise software applications on their clients behalf." - this happens for clients that are and are not working on QBO. (Odd, as I've authorised them on both Easy MTD and QBO...)
Thanks for that. This confirms what we are seeing in the clients Business Tax Accounts - that HMRC does not have any "open obligations" for the client. Using "Easy MTD VAT", the three with issues show nothing under the open obligation panels, while the other dozen we've enrolled all show the 1st April to 30th June VAT quarter as open. (We've only enrolled 30th June Quarter End clients for MTD thus far)
I have, I'm afraid, no idea of the numbers on this - I was running some calculations based on HMG's Planning Notice for No Deal for one of our larger importers/exporters - they import finished leather goods from China, and export across Europe. Based on the reduced tariff schedule for Import duty, but adding in the increased costs of exporting to Europe and facing the Common External Tariff, they'd be marginally better off (by around 1% of total turnover)
Of course this varies across different industries.
Yeah, we do the same currently - we’ve been doing the same for payments through stripe/Shopify etc, but we’re fairly certain data for this falls under the requirement to hold _at least_ daily totals in your bookkeeping software as part of MTD.
I assume you’re considering continuing this way with Amazon as compliant because of the 3rd Party agent rules contained within VAT notice 700/22?
My answers
Can you provide a little more detail as to the background? Is it just the one week in March they're furloughed for?
Guidance + Legislation seems to suggest HMRC are ignoring non-working days, which begs an interesting question of when they're furloughed from. If a Mon-Fri employee is furloughed at the end of the week, do you claim from the Saturday or the Monday? (We're going with Saturday as policy, but intrigued in other perspectives?)
Thanks for the comments so far chaps;
Their employment is not taxable due to the international treaty which founded the supranational organisation they work at - stating that employees would not be subject to UK Income Tax/NI requirements.
However, they are a standard UK citizen, and as such would presumably have some form of liability on other earnings - the question is whether that would be at PA->BR or additional rate.
Unsurprisingly, this fixed nothing for us.
Update for anyone interested: HMRC have now admitted this has been a known issue for the last 3 months (they just didn't tell the VAT helpline or MTD unit), with a fix scheduled for Monday.
The issue was something to do with the codes they use to identify specific VAT periods for firms - alphanumeric codes were processing fine, but some firms have (for a reason known only to HMRC) purely numeric keys, and these seem to be at the heart of the problem.
Haha, HMRC certainly seems to expect so!!!
Hi John,
not sure where to find this error code. QBO doesn't show it (unless I'm looking in the wrong place). Neither does Easy MTD VAT. Also just tried VAT Direct and got a never-before-seen "you cannot access client data at the moment" error message on HMRC when attempting to authorise - underneath states "Agents are currently not able to authorise software applications on their clients behalf." - this happens for clients that are and are not working on QBO. (Odd, as I've authorised them on both Easy MTD and QBO...)
Qualified Accountant, and "digitally savvy" - not a trained programmer, but more than a basic knowledge of IT. Why do you ask?
Hi John,
Thanks for that. This confirms what we are seeing in the clients Business Tax Accounts - that HMRC does not have any "open obligations" for the client. Using "Easy MTD VAT", the three with issues show nothing under the open obligation panels, while the other dozen we've enrolled all show the 1st April to 30th June VAT quarter as open. (We've only enrolled 30th June Quarter End clients for MTD thus far)
I have, I'm afraid, no idea of the numbers on this - I was running some calculations based on HMG's Planning Notice for No Deal for one of our larger importers/exporters - they import finished leather goods from China, and export across Europe. Based on the reduced tariff schedule for Import duty, but adding in the increased costs of exporting to Europe and facing the Common External Tariff, they'd be marginally better off (by around 1% of total turnover)
Of course this varies across different industries.
Thanks mg200,
Yeah, we do the same currently - we’ve been doing the same for payments through stripe/Shopify etc, but we’re fairly certain data for this falls under the requirement to hold _at least_ daily totals in your bookkeeping software as part of MTD.
I assume you’re considering continuing this way with Amazon as compliant because of the 3rd Party agent rules contained within VAT notice 700/22?