HMRC´s attempt to woo digital artisans with new Make Tax Digital initiative fails miserably

HMRC´s attempt to woo digital artisans with its new Make Tax Digital (MTD) initiative has failed miserably.

Digital artisans are now obliged to complete a tax return five times a year via MTD.

The website Guido Fawkes has revealed that just 3.3% of the people who will be affected by the new directive bothered to attend HMRC-run information webinars.

From April, self-filers earning over £50,000 have to move from using the traditional Self Assessment portal and adopt the Make Tax Digital method - using four quarterly updates and then a final year-end filing to complete the process.

The £50,000 level reduces to £30,000 from 6 April 2027 and £20,000 from 6 April 2028.

To get digital artisans ready for the changes, HMRC have been promoting and running webinars for different groups on the system since 10 April last year.

Following Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Guido discovered that up to 2 April this year there were only 15,069 attendees of any webinar for landlords and joint property owners.

And only 13,436 attendees of any webinar for sole traders or landlords without an accountant or bookkeeper. 

Guido calculated that is 28,505 attendees in total which is 3.3% of this year’s additions to the system.

What's more, that represents just 0.98% of the total 2.9 million who will have to join the system by the end of the Parliament.

An HMRC spokesperson trilled: “We are continuing to facilitate MTD educational webinars and have events currently scheduled up to the end of June 2026.”