MTD and VAT Groups

Hey Eagleeyesolutions,

It may be best to reach out to an Tax Accountant, specializing in Quickbooks, just in-case there is something specific you need to do.

From the point of view of submitting a VAT Group return, Quickbooks is not programmed to support a VAT Group's return, which i expect is slightly different than the standard VAT return (perhaps not at user level, but in terms of HMRC forms, we know how they love their forms!) HMRC may be happy for you to use a bridging software, to combine each companies VAT returns into a single submission and submit through that method.

I'll leave this open to the wider community - however, i'll add one last recommendation to this post - speak to HMRC, and find out if each company needs to submit induvidual VAT returns through MTD, which HMRC then combine, or if there is a different process for your companies being a VAT group - Mention we have a bridging tool available for our customers, which you'll be able to use.

@JamesC  I am in a similar position, and I am by no means an expert, but happy to share my knowledge.

Firstly, as you correctly say, HMRC treats all members of a group as one entity for VAT reporting purposes. You do have to register the constituent companies (using VAT50 & VAT51) but they just end up as a footnote, really. HMRC expects one combined return against one VRN for the group - they will not combine multiple returns. A group VAT return is identical to an individual company VAT return (i.e. VAT100) so from an MTD perspective QuickBooks will happily do this for you. The challenge I am finding is how to setup QuickBooks to manage my constituent companies e.g. Invoices fees against Company 1, showing P&L for Company 2 etc.

You should not have VRNs for your constituent companies, if you have, then you have incorrectly setup your group - see here for more info: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-registration-for-groups-divisions-and-joint-ventures

Remember that you can't use the Flat Rate Scheme (FRS) for group VAT reporting - I tripped up over this little detail.

Hope this helps.

Hey @tictag

Thank you for your additional information; I've found it really useful - I apologize it's taken me until now to reply, this was picked up when i was out of the office and left open to the floor without a staff reply.

I wanted to give you my thoughts on your statement " The challenge I am finding is how to setup QuickBooks to manage my constituent companies e.g. Invoices fees against Company 1, showing P&L for Company 2 etc. "

You can do this on our Plus Accounts - Using Class/Location tracking. That way, you can do all of it on one file, and whichever company its related too, you can mark it with a class, or a location - and then you can run your P + L, Balance Sheet and numerous other reports - including transaction reports to see such things as Invoice Fees.

Effectively, you can run most reports "Group by - Class" or "Group by - Location" and further, if you open any report, click customise, (if you have class/location turned on) - you'll be able to filter this report to only show the transactions which you've categorised (company 1 - Company 2 & etc

Hello Jeanc

Can we just confirm with you being on Group Vat are you submitting using the bridging software?Can you provide a screenshot showing the error message that you receive so we can look into his further.

Thanks

Emma

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@TaliaI wrote:

You will need to submit any Group scheme returns via the bridging tool.

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@TaliaI I am a bit confused by this statement. I have been reporting VAT as a group using QuickBooks Online MTD for some time and have never used such a tool. Is this 'bridging tool' only required for certain scenarios?

That article does not help. I am wondering if the issue could be the company name as it is a group which company do I submit it in?

I am the treasurer for a charity with two limited companies and a group VAT registration. We will need to make one return but can't see anything in QBs that will let us do this. The posts below are all dated in 2019 and I wondered if any functionality has been added to QBs since that make a group submission possible.

Many thanks

Derek

That should read "You then need to go into company B and mark the return as filed but select that MTD is not required."

Many thanks - I will give that try

Derek