HMRC’s new Making Tax Digital system is over-complicated, but we have the means to cope. Some points we would make are: • We have set up our own little Intranet so we can find our way around the new system quickly. It definitely does need something like this because of the complexity. • We normally do VAT bookkeeping and submissions for our clients since our ability to scan bank statements using optical character recognition makes it more cost-effective for us to do it. You don’t have to punish yourself. You can let us do the worrying about MTD. • We charge per VAT return but since we do them in less time using OCR, our fees are likely to be lower. We give a 25% discount on the annual accounts if we have done the VAT returns because your data has already been captured. There is nothing extra to pay for an online bookkeeping system because we don’t use one ourselves and don’t insist on one. We are astounded to hear that there are accountants, normally outside this area, who insist that you use online bookkeeping !!! • Every submission of a VAT return that we make will be double-checked by downloading it again on another computer. We have made the first formally verified submission in the UK and encourage other accountants to emulate us. • David Porthouse is a regular contributor to the new HMRC Agent Forum and an advocate of new technology across the board. That is no endorsement of this particular MTD system, but he will apply pressure for something sensible to emerge.