Spotlight on Making Tax Digital engagement groups

The ATT, CIOT and LITRG have been engaging regularly with HMRC regarding Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD) throughout its development. With the first phase of MTD mandation now only a year away, engagement with HMRC remains focused on clarifying remaining technical and policy matters, whilst also extending to include MTD readiness – including steps that taxpayers and agents can take to get ready for April 2026.

Our engagement with HMRC includes three specific working groups, but extends much wider than these. A week rarely goes by without some MTD-related contact between ourselves and HMRC.

MTD Readiness Forum

The Readiness Forum brings together agent representatives and professional bodies. These monthly meetings have been an opportunity to discuss outstanding MTD policy and technical matters with HMRC and to feed back concerns raised by members regarding how MTD will work in practice.

Moving forward, the objective of this group is shifting towards MTD readiness, illustrated by its recent name change from MTD Advisory Forum.

MTD Guidance Strategy Group

This group was set up late last year and encompasses agent representatives, professional bodies and HMRC. It is co-chaired by HMRC and the ATT’s Director of Public Policy Emma Rawson. MTD policy matters are not discussed within this group as the focus is on improving existing MTD guidance and developing new material needed before April 2026.

Program Readiness Forum

This group brings together software developers, agents and professional bodies every other month. The meetings cover outstanding policy matters and updates on the MTD testing phase. Whilst there is limited opportunity for discussion, their main objective is to provide a breadth of stakeholders with a consistent update on MTD implementation progress.

Until recently, this group was called the Program Progress Forum. As with the MTD Readiness Forum, the recent rebranding reflects HMRC’s increasing priority of helping taxpayers and agents prepare for MTD.

Ad-hoc engagement

The above groups provide a regular point of engagement with HMRC. In practice, a lot of our work takes place in a less formal way, as we are regularly in touch with HMRC’s MTD team to discuss outstanding policy matters, tackle technical queries and comment on HMRC’s communication plans. The ATT, CIOT and LITRG also each have a monthly ‘check-in’ with representatives from HMRC’s MTD team.

Representatives from ATT, CIOT and LITRG have attended ad-hoc ‘co-creation’ meetings, arranged by HMRC as a way of getting stakeholder input on specific pieces of the wider MTD puzzle.

These virtual and in-person events use breakout groups to draw out insight from agents, professional bodies and software developers on particularly thorny MTD issues. Sessions to date have targeted issues such as complexities for landlords of jointly-owned properties, easements and HMRC’s software choices webpage.

We continue to welcome feedback from members on MTD, via [email protected] or 
[email protected].