Editorial Policy: How Making Tax Digital Calculator Is Written, Sourced, Checked and Kept Independent
Published
What we publish, where every rule comes from, who checks it, how we use AI tools and other people’s videos, and what the site never does.
These are the rules every page on the site is written to: the guides, the calculators and these pages about the site.
What we publish
Guides and calculators about Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, for UK sole traders and landlords. Each page covers one subject, such as the deadlines, the penalties or who is exempt. We write in plain British English, and we name the tax year or the date instead of writing “this year”.
Independence
The site isn’t HMRC, GOV.UK or any part of government, and never says or suggests that it is. Nobody pays us to write about anything. There’s no advertising and there are no affiliate links, and we don’t recommend any software. If the site carries advertising in future, the privacy and cookie pages change first.
Sources
Every rule comes from GOV.UK, HMRC’s manuals or legislation.gov.uk. Each figure is printed with its source and the day it was checked, and the page build refuses an amount, a percentage or a day and month typed in by hand. Anything announced but not yet law is called announced, with the date it was announced. How we check the figures sets out the whole process.
Estimates, not advice
Nothing on the site is tax advice. The calculators work out an estimate from the published rules and what you type, and HMRC decides whether Making Tax Digital applies to you. For your own case, ask HMRC or a tax adviser.
The people in our examples
The people in our worked examples are made up, and so are their figures. The rules applied to them are HMRC’s. When we work an example of our own through one of HMRC’s rules, we call it our example. HMRC’s own worked examples are always named as HMRC’s.
Who writes and checks the pages
We write the pages and build the calculators with the help of AI tools, and we use them in the research and the reviews too. We never invent writers, photographs or qualifications. Before each batch of pages goes live, a separate review checks it against the research records.
A reviewer named on the About page reads every page and reports any problem she finds. It is then fixed at its source, and a wrong figure is listed on the corrections page. Piyush Choudhary, who publishes the site, checks figures too. Where one of them has also checked a page’s figures line by line, the page says so under its title, with who checked them and the day. If the page changes, that line goes until it is checked again.
Other people’s videos
Some pages embed a video where it helps, HMRC’s own first. The others come from the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group and the National Residential Landlords Association. Each one has our own caption saying who made it, when, and why it’s on the page, with a link to watch it on YouTube. The NRLA’s caption says that it sells software of its own. A video is never a page’s source for a figure.
Dates
Each page shows the day it was first published. Its Updated date moves only when its words or figures change, never for a change of design.
Corrections
A wrong figure is fixed in the research and the rules, so with the next update of the site every page that prints it changes, and the correction is listed with its date on the corrections page.