Treasury written question – answered at on 26 March 2026.
Harriet Cross
Opposition Assistant Whip (Commons)
To ask the Chancellor of the exchequer, how much public money has been spent to date on the development and roll-out of Making Tax Digital; and what the projected total cost is for completing the programme.
Dan Tomlinson
The Exchequer Secretary
Originally announced at Budget 2015, Making Tax Digital (MTD) supports UK businesses to transact digitally. It encourages timely and accurate record keeping, reducing the part of the tax gap caused by taxpayer error and failure to take reasonable care.
The most recent Accounting Officer’s Assessment was published on 4 June 2025 and estimated a public sector lifecycle cost of £1.4 billion for the MTD programme. This assessment also estimated an overall lifecycle monetised benefit of £6.2 billion. These are considerable benefits, providing vital funding for public services, which are expected to continue beyond the 5-year window assessed in the business case.
MTD will also generate significant non-monetisable benefits, including through modernising HMRC’s critical national IT infrastructure for the VAT and ITSA regimes.
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The chancellor of the exchequer is the government's chief financial minister and as such is responsible for raising government revenue through taxation or borrowing and for controlling overall government spending.
The chancellor's plans for the economy are delivered to the House of Commons every year in the Budget speech.
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