With less than a week to go the majority of small businesses in the North East are ready for Making Tax Digital, a quick-fire poll by Sage has revealed.
The poll, carried out at a joint event between Sage and the Federation of Small Businesses, also showed that the majority of small businesses in the region understood the implications of the new tax changes – and that they can see the benefits it will bring to their businesses.
Out of nearly a hundred FSB members and Sage customers who took part in the pulse-check at Sage’s Newcastle headquarters, 70 percent said they understood what the MTD for VAT programme is and ‘what this means for my business’.
When asked ‘how much do you agree with this statement: My business is ready for MTD for VAT’, 27 percent of participants ‘somewhat disagreed’ and 16 percent ‘strongly disagreed’. However, 41 percent said they ‘somewhat agreed’, and 16 percent ‘strongly agreed’.
Sentiment around the new legislation and the impact it could have also appears to be positive among small businesses in the area. The majority said they see MTD as a ‘good thing for my business’ (26 percent strongly agreed with that view and 46% somewhat agreed). Only 20 percent said they ‘somewhat disagreed’ and 8 percent ‘strongly disagreed’.
“It’s great to see, based on this sample, that many small businesses can see the benefits of digitising tax,” said Katie Powell, MTD Lead, Sage UK. “Making your tax processes MTD compliant will help streamline the way you run your business in the long run, offer-up richer insights to make more informed business decisions and reduce time wasted on unnecessary admin tasks.
“Our Sage Productivity Tracker shows that today (25th March) UK businesses are losing 5.6% of their time to admin tasks, amounting to over £9 billion wasted collectively so far this year – time that could be better spent on value-added tasks that help grow your business. MTD is an important step to addressing this drain on business efficiencies.”
