Making Tax Digital 1: How Document Scanners Can Help Your Business

What is Making Tax Digital?

HMRC’s Making Tax Digital plan is a paperless scheme, designed to move the UK’s self-employed towards digital tax returns. Making Tax Digital for business involves keeping digital records of important tax documentation and using accounting software to complete tax returns. Eventually, paper records won’t meet the requirements of tax legislation.

What Does This Mean?

This means that you will need to begin keeping digital records of all your important tax documentation on digital memory. The easiest way to do this is through the use of a document scanner. Once you have collected your documents, simply scan them through using your new scanner and save to a folder on your computer’s hard drive. You can then send your tax documents to HMRC electronically and easily access them for later reference.

What type of scanner should I look for?

To scan lots of documents in one go, you will need a sheet-fed scanner. Most tax and other important documentation (such as invoices, delivery sheets) are printed on A4 paper. Therefore, you should look to purchase an A4 sheet-fed document scanner.
These scanners are often provided with software that will allow you to convert your physical paper into searchable electronic PDF’s, which is important when searching for particular financial detail.

Examples

Some great, affordable and compact examples of sheet-fed document scanners are the following:

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1500 A4 Document Scanner

This ScanSnap model is the market leading A4 document scanner. Its compact design is perfect for small office and home-use purposes and the scanner is bundled with ABBYY FineReader for ScanSnap, which is a great tool for financial documentation scanning and making tax digital. The touch screen display allows for up to four users to set their own scanning jobs.

https://www.thescannershop.com/fujitsu-scansnap-ix1500-document-scanner/

Kodak Alaris E1025 A4 Document Scanner

Kodak Alaris have released the E1025. A small, 25 page per minute scanner perfect for home office or small business use. Included software, Perfect Page, allows users to enhance their scanned images. This improves the visibility of scanned documentation, such as information printed on coloured paper or hole-punched paper etc.

https://www.thescannershop.com/kodak-alaris-e1025-document-scanner/

Epson Workforce DS-530 A4 Document Scanner

Epson’s Workforce DS-530 is a great, energy efficient scanner which will keep the energy costs of your business low. Provided with comprehensive software, Document Capture Pro, which is user-friendly and very easy to set-up. Easily convert your scanned images to searchable PDF’s and get on with making tax digital

https://www.thescannershop.com/epson-workforce-ds-530-scanner/

Brother ADS-2200 A4 Document Scanner

The Brother ADS-2200 is a great entry-level scanner, provided with user friendly software which is ideal for making tax digital. Its sleek design is well suited for home office or small business use and offers great value in comparison to similar models

https://www.thescannershop.com/brother-ads-2200-scanner/

Published on 27/04/2020