The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) has backed a House of Lords committee report calling for the implementation of Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT to be delayed.

The government set to mandate MTD for all businesses with taxable turnover of over £85,000 on 1 April 2019.

But the House of Lords Economic Affairs Finance Bill Sub Committee report warns that as many as 40% of affected businesses have not heard of MTD, let alone started to prepare for change to their accounting processes.

The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) has backed the Treating Small Businesses Fairly report’s findings, calling for a delay until 2020.

In a letter to the Treasury, the ACS called for the change to be delayed to allow businesses more time to prepare for the reforms and MTD for other taxes to be delayed until 2022.

ACS chief executive, James Lowman, believes small businesses need more time to adjust to the new system.

“We support the view of the Economic Affairs Committee that the government should delay the implementation of Making Tax Digital for another 12 months to give retailers more time to prepare for the change,” Lowman said.

“HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) have not allocated enough time to learn from their pilot programme and awareness amongst small business owners is low.”

ACS has produced guidance for retailers to help them prepare for submitting quarterly tax updates under MTD, which can be found here.