With the roll-out of Making Tax Digital going ahead, HMRC must provide an in-house, government-developed, fully-functional software that allows easy and confident compliance with MTD. Self-employed people should not be obliged to hand data to private companies.

The relationship to HMRC should be secure and simple with no obligatory commercial intermediaries. On commercial platforms we can be beholden to: price increases; reduced functionality in free or non-premium versions; software becoming unavailable through company failure. Yes, free software is available, but it is basic and carries the same risks. HMRC must develop a government-owned, free software that cannot fail or be subject to the vicissitudes of the market.