Xero UK Roadshow 2021

We attended the latest Xero Roadshow, held as a virtual event on 15 and 16 September, which provided an opportunity to learn about product updates and hear what Xero has in the pipeline for the coming months, along with interesting sessions delivered by keynote speakers.

The most exciting announcement was around how Xero intends to address the requirements for the upcoming changes to Self-Assessment tax from April 2023. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self-Assessment (MTD ITSA), will affect all individuals with self-employed and/or rental income greater than £10,000 from April 2023. The changes will require those affected to make quarterly submissions to HMRC with a summary of their income and expenses. The HMRC legislation is still up to two months from being released and until then it is not appropriate to make any further comment on what the specific requirements will be.

In readiness for the introduction of MTD ITSA, Xero used the Roadshow as a platform to announce the launch of the new Personal Tax module. Many of our clients already use Xero for their bookkeeping and VAT returns, in order to comply with Making Tax Digital for VAT which was mandated from April 2019. For those clients, there will be a further step in their quarterly administrative cycle to complete their MTD ITSA submission using the Personal Tax module.

Where clients are mandated to comply with MTD ITSA (but who are not VAT registered) they will need to adopt software in order to make the quarterly submissions to HMRC. The details of transactions for income and expenditure will need to be recorded into Xero and then the Personal Tax module will be used to generate the summary information for submission to HMRC. At the end of the tax year, a fifth submission will be required in order to finalise the year and then when the tax return is prepared a sixth “crystallisation” submission will be made.

Whilst MTD ITSA is not mandated until April 2023, it is possible to sign up for the scheme from April 2022 and the team at Scott & Wilkinson will be here to help our clients with every step of the process. We will be reaching out to those clients who we believe are affected over the coming months, however, please feel free to contact the office if you would like to sign up for the scheme earlier.