Small businesses breathed a collective sigh of relief when Chancellor Philip Hammond resisted calls to lower the VAT registration threshold in Autumn Budget 2017.
The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) made eight core recommendations for the Government to clarify the VAT system ahead of the Chancellor's speech on 22nd November 2017.
It called the current VAT registration threshold of £85,000 the most pressing issue in its Routes to Simplification report.
Payment is required if the tax bill is more than £1,000, unless you've already paid more than 80% of all tax you owe.
Two payments are due each year - on 31st January and 31st July. Each payment is half of the previous year's tax bill.
People who are already registered for self-assessment with HMRC can check their payments on account via your online account. This will show any payments on account already made and any payments owed.
In a letter to financial secretary to the Treasury, David Gauke, Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, said that submitting records in a 'prescribed digital format' would bring a financial burden to small firms that currently don't have accounting software or use computers.
In his reply David Gauke said:
