Making Tax Digital: Send to Tax Return - User Guide

2.1 2019.2 onwards

• 'Send to Tax Return' no longer uses the user called CCH be default and does not require any special setup for users to access the functionality.
• 'Send to Tax Return' continues to use the CCH Personal Tax schema, usually called Tax Factory.
• From the 2019.2 version of CCH Central, the CCH Central Service Hub is used instead of the CCH Practice Portal Service. The CCH Central Service Hub must be installed and running.

2.2 2019.1 and earlier versions

CCH User
'Send to Tax Return' uses the CCH Personal Tax schema, usually called Tax Factory. This normally relies on the presence of a user called CCH. For all recent installations this is already configured and forms part of the Central database upon installation. Some older installations may not have this user and others may have removed the user. Ask your Administrator / Superuser to check for this employee and if it does not exist follow the instructions in the System Administrator section.

CCH Practice Portal Service
The CCH Practice Portal Service needs to be installed and running. To ensure the service is running check the services (or ask your administrator to do this):

Configuration Keys

There is a configuration key that controls the use of pre-population data available under HMRC’s Making Tax Digital project. By default this configuration key is switched off, i.e. the key value is set to 0.

Select File > Maintenance > User Defined > Configuration:


PT_DigitalTax_Enable - adding the Key Value 1 enables the View DTA option in the ribbon bar within a client’s Tax Return. API calls can be made, and a report appears of the client’s data held by HMRC. When this key is set to a value of 0, the option in the ribbon bar is visible but disabled for users.

HMRC Authorisation

• The authorisation to use the DTA information must be done in CCH Central because this currently relies on existing agent credentials and does not yet work with the new Agent Services Account.
• To allow your software to access HMRC’s pre-population data, existing agent credentials (i.e. those currently used for online filing and to access the HMRC Agent Portal) must be authorised. This provides an OAuth 2.0 token which is stored by CCH Central; this token is then used when subsequent API calls are made.
• Agent credentials may be stored in several locations within CCH Central and each of these locations has the ability to authorise credentials. Where the same credentials are entered in various locations, the credentials only need to be authorised once to apply in all locations they are used, provided the user ID and passwords match exactly.
• HMRC agent credentials must be entered correctly and saved in CCH Central to gain access to the APIs. CCH Central will automatically enter the credentials on the HMRC webpage; however HMRC may make changes to this page that results in this facility not working. If the user ID and passwords have to be manually entered, please ensure they match the credentials where the authorisation process was launched from.
• The ability to authorise agent credentials are subject to task permissions – refer to System Administrator below. It is set up in such a way to allow a single user, e.g. an IT administrator, to authorise multiple sets of credentials as well as cater for individuals authorising their own credentials.

Tax System Parameters – Online Filing tab
Agent credentials can be entered at database or company/office/department/employee level within the Online Filing tab.

1. Select File > Maintenance > Tax Settings > Personal Tax > Tax System Parameters. Where credentials are used at database level, an option Authorise HMRC DTA, shows the current authorisation status and is from where the process is controlled.
   
   Where credentials are used at company/office/department level, a column Authorise HMRC DTA appears in the table. The current authorisation status appears and is from where the process is controlled.
   
2. To authorise a set of agent credentials, click on the associated 'Not Authorised' hyperlink.
   

   Tip! It is helpful to copy the user ID and password before authorising the credentials in case the auto-population does not work on the login page and details must be manually entered.
   
   CCH Central displays a webpage owned by HMRC ‘Authority to interact with HMRC on your behalf’

3. Click on 'Continue'. The user ID and password should automatically populate. Where this does not happen, manually enter the details, ensuring they match the row the authorisation process was launched from. The HMRC page lists the information sources CCH Central will access.

4. Select 'Grant authority'

The webpage closes, and a success message appears. Click 'OK', the message disappears and the updated Authorise HMRC DTA status of the credentials is shown.

An employee can have their own agent credentials entered against their employee record in CCH Central. This is accessed under the Online filing details tab when viewing the employee details record.

Authorise HMRC DTA shows the current authorisation status and is from where the process is controlled. To authorise, click on the associated 'Not Authorised' hyperlink.

5. Follow steps 3 and 4 as above.

Status

There are three statuses associated with the HMRC DTA authorisation.

• Where the credentials have not been authorised and no OAuth 2.0 token exists in the CCH Central database, 'Not Authorised' appears.
  
• Where credentials have been successfully authorised and a valid OAuth 2.0 token exists in the CCH Central database, Authorised & Valid appears
  
• The OAuth 2.0 token will expire, e.g. when the authorisation period determined by HMRC has been exceeded. Where credentials have been authorised and an OAuth 2.0 token exists, but this token is expired, Authorised & Expired appears.

Where the same set of credentials are used in more than one place, for example against an office and against a specific employee, the credentials themselves only need be authorised once. The status automatically updates within CCH Central wherever the same credentials are used.

Clearing tokens

In cases where the OAuth 2.0 access token may need to be removed, the Authorise HMRC DTA menu box includes an option to Clear token.

Selecting this option and confirming the deletion of the token against the selected credentials will revert the status to Not Authorised.

HMRC Pre-Population Data

The details appearing in this panel are provided by the HMRC APIs.

The APIs currently available are:

API	Includes
Employment	Employer name
	PAYE reference
	Pay from this employment
	Tax deducted from this employment
Employment Benefits	Description of benefit
	Value of benefit
Marriage Allowance	Existing status
	Is taxpayer deceased?

 

Marriage Allowance – Spouse’s Eligibility to Receive Allowance	Eligibility
National Insurance Contributions	Total earnings liable to Class 1 NIC above PT and up to UEL
	Class 2 NIC total due
	Have maximum NI contributions been reached?
Pensions & Retirement Annuities	Total pay from all pensions & retirement annuities (excluding State Pension)
	Total Tax deducted from all pensions & retirement annuities
State Benefits	Incapacity Benefits payments received
	Total tax deducted from Incapacity Benefits
	Jobseeker’s Allowance payments received
Tax Refunds	Tax Refunds Tax refunded or set off by HMRC or Jobcentre Plus

To reiterate some of these APIs have limitations when applied to CCH Personal Tax. These are as follows:

Marriage Allowance & spouse’s eligibility

• To ensure that the Marriage Allowance API to check a client’s spouse’s eligibility to receive an allowance transfer is called, a tax return must exist in CCH Personal Tax. The spouse information needs to be pulled from CCH Personal Tax from the Marriage tab in the client’s record. Additionally, the spouse’s record must contain the following details for the API to be called:
  ‒ First and last name
  ‒ National Insurance number
  ‒ Date of birth
• •CCH Personal Tax does not contain a setting defining the eligibility of the spouse to receive the Marriage Allowance, therefore these details cannot be sent to the tax return.
• Is Taxpayer deceased? – CCH Personal Tax does not contain a setting within the Marriage Allowance window to record if the client is deceased, and therefore these details cannot be sent to the tax return.

National Insurance

Not all years are fully supported in CCH Personal Tax as changes would have needed to be made to National Insurance in CCH Personal Tax for the prior years to support the Send to Tax Return functionality. The limitations are as follows:

• Class 1 NI Contributions – This is supported from 2016/17 onwards as the fields were merged in CCH Personal Tax into a single field Earnings liable to Class 1 NIC above PT and up to UEL; previously (2015/16 and earlier) the information was held in two separate fields.
• Class 2 NI Contributions – This is supported from 2017/18 onwards only. Previously it was necessary to check the override box; this box has been removed in 2017/18 allowing the details to be committed from CCH OneClick into CCH Personal Tax.
• Have maximum NI contributions been reached? – CCH Personal Tax does not record this information therefore these details cannot be committed.

Employment Benefits in Kind

The employment benefits in kind data provided by HMRC consolidates individual sections from the Form P11D into the categories as they are entered on a tax return, which does not match the fields within CCH Personal Tax.

Where Send to Tax Return is used for benefits they will populate one of the relevant fields in CCH Personal Tax, as HMRC’s APIs do not provide the exact make up of the benefits.

Pensions & Retirement Annuities

The pensions data provided by HMRC is a total of all pensions held by a client rather than a breakdown per pension provider. This can only be sent to the tax return where no individual pension providers are listed, and the summary fields are enabled in the pensions received data entry source in CCH Personal Tax.

Send to Tax Return

Before clicking Send to Tax Return, data needs to be selected. The methods described below applies to all pre-population sections.

7. There are three ways of selecting the pre-population data.

‒ Use all sections in tax return – this option selects all data in all sections in the tax year.

- Use all in tax return – this option selects all data for the relevant section only.

 
- Select the desired data at individual row level - Click anywhere on the row of the item to be selected.

The selection expands. Tick the Use in tax return check box:

8. Click Close, the option is retained, and the section closes retaining the tick:

9. When the desired data is selected, click Send to Tax Return to send the data to CCH Personal Tax. The status box shows that the selected data is being sent to CCH Personal Tax.

When the data has been successfully sent a message appears.

If an error has been encountered, a message is displayed with information to explain the error. 

CCH Personal Tax Data Info Panel
The CCH Personal Tax Info Panel is populated using our Tax Factory database schema and displays the information already entered in CCH Personal Tax.

Where the return has been created but no details entered, the side panel appears as follows:


Where data is already present in a tax return, the CCH Personal Tax Info Panel displays the details present in CCH Personal Tax.

After Send to Tax Return has been completed for selected data, the CCH Personal Tax Info Panel is updated to reflect the changes as they are made in CCH Personal Tax: