Making Tax Digital: Why do you need an Agent Services Account?

Agent Services Accounts are an aspect of Making Tax Digital (MTD) that accountants need to be aware of and understand on their journey to support clients in being compliant.

Accountancy firms assisting their clients with MTD need an agent services account to access certain HMRC services.

To get started with this you essentially need to create an account. Gov.uk specifies that whoever creates the account must be the person responsible for your firm’s tax or administrative matters.

Our reporter, Lucy Skoulding, interviewed HMRC’s Verna Gellvear from the MTD Customer Readiness and External Stakeholder Team about how to set up an account.

As if signing in to other systems, you can sign in to your online services account for agents using your old Government Gateway user ID and password.

There are four key steps you need to follow when setting up your Agent Services Account.

1, Set up your new Agent Services Account via the link on gov.uk.

2. You then need to be able to map your clients across using your old Government Gateway credentials.

Top tip: You won’t be able to see your clients in your Agent Services Account at this point, but don’t think this part of the process hasn’t worked.

3. When you are ready to start submitting your clients’ VAT go into the link and say which MTD compliant software you’re going to use.

4. You need to sign up your clients individually to submit their VAT returns under MTD. You can give access to various delegates within your business to be able to pull in some of these clients so several of you can share the load of the job.

Remember that the first MTD return needs to be submitted from five days after they send in their old return and 15 days before they submit their MTD VAT return.

Get more of Sage’s expert advice on getting ready for Making Tax Digital by following our video series on Accountancy Age.