First you’ll need to identify which clients are impacted by Making Tax Digital for Income Tax and discuss these changes with every client.
If you think a client qualifies for MTD in the 2024/25 financial year, make sure to step them through the process and explain the implications of using a compliant, MTD-ready accounting software.
Once you’ve talked them through they will need to sign up to Sage Accounting through your practice. You can benefit from rewards as you unlock points for getting clients to sign up.
All agents need an Agent Services Account (ASA) to be able to access MTD services and make submissions on behalf of their clients. Think of this as similar to the Government Gateway login.
You will only need one ASA for your firm. Once you have one you can set up your staff with administrator or assistant logins to use the account.
Your firm may already have signed up for an ASA when you registered to submit MTD for VAT returns or Trust Registration Service returns.
The next step is to ensure you have compatible accounting software to be able to submit quarterly updates on behalf of your clients.
Sage Accounting MTD is currently one of the few products on the HMRC list of approved providers that is ready to use right now if you wish to sign up clients for beta testing.
https://www.sage.com/en-gb/making-tax-digital/mtd-vat-software/
Once you have MTD compatible software you can sign up eligible clients for MTD for Income Tax. Here is the information you’ll need for the sign-up process:
- Client’s full name
- Date of birth
- National Insurance number
- Business start date or the date your client started receiving income
- Accounting method (cash or accrual basis)
- The tax year your client would like to start using MTD for Income Tax
Once completed you’ll need to provide the client’s authorisation.
You can do this either by signing in to the Agent Services Account and following the steps, or you can copy over the client’s existing authorisation for self assessment from your HMRC online services for agents account to the ASA.