'Making Tax Digital' and Bank Charges

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 20 June 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

Hundreds and thousands of sole traders and landlords are facing a significant change in how they file their tax returns. In less than a year 800,000 people with a turnover of above £50,000 who fill out self assessment tax returns will have to fill out summaries four times a year, and then do their final self assessment too. It's all part of something called "Making Tax Digital". Paul Lewis interviews James Murray who is the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.

Hundreds of millions of pounds has been paid out to people who were underpaid their state pensions. We'll discuss who they are, and talk about another group of people who could be eligible but haven't claimed.

And, listeners who volunteer with community groups like film clubs, girl guides and charity fundraising groups have been contacting Money Box upset over new charges they're facing to use their bank accounts. What options are there for those affected?

Presenter: Paul Lewis Reporter: Dan Whitworth Researchers: Eimear Devlin and Jo Krasner Editor: Jess Quayle

(First broadcast 12pm Saturday 24th May 2025)

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:04.7	Hello, welcome to this Moneybox podcast.
0:07.5	Hundreds of millions of pounds has been paid out to people who were underpaid their state pension for years.
0:13.8	But another group of pensioners is missing out, and the Department for Work and Pensions can't find them.
0:19.9	And the small, unpaid community groups upset over new bank account charges.
0:25.0	But first, in less than a year, over three quarters of a million sole traders and landlords
0:29.9	will have to file five tax returns a year instead of just one.
0:34.5	And they'll have to do it using accounting software approved by HM, revenue and
0:39.0	customs. The people affected have a turnover, that's the business's growth income, above
0:44.0	£50,000 a year, but over the following two years they'll be joined by hundreds of thousands
0:48.7	more of even smaller traders. At the moment, self-employed people put the details of their business accounts
0:55.1	into their tax return once a year on the government's own website. But from April, the new
1:00.5	system, called Making Tax Digital, will force them to use commercial software which sends
1:06.3	quarterly summaries to HMRC and then repeats all that information in their end-of-year tax return
1:12.2	to which they must add their personal details.
1:15.2	Evelyn is a pensioner.
1:16.6	She works part-time as a counsellor and Jess is a sound artist.
1:20.4	Both contacted Moneybox with concerns about how it will work.
1:23.8	This will change my situation in having to fill in the self-assessment tax form quarterly, which will mean I'm going to have to do it four times a year.
1:34.6	I don't use spreadsheets, and I don't intend to start now, frankly, and it's going to cause an awful lot more worry and time having to fill it all in four times a year.
1:46.5	It's going to cost us all quite a lot more money because we're going to have to use our accountants
1:50.8	far more.
	...

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