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HMRC Authorisation for VAT

Before you can submit any VAT data, you must give My Tax Digital permission to interact with your VAT account on HMRC's system.

 

My Tax Digital HMRC Authorisation for VAT

Authorisation Process

  1. To authorise, you first sign in to My Tax Digital and select your business.
  2. From the business home screen, click the "MTD VAT tile," then the "HMRC authorisation tile".
  3. You will need the government gateway ID that is linked to the HMRC VAT account for the VAT-registered business.
  4. Once you have your gateway ID, click on the "Continue to HMRC button," and then click "Continue" to allow the software to connect with HMRC.
  5. Click "Sign in to the HMRC online service".
  6. On the sign-in screen, enter the gateway ID and password linked to the VAT account and click "Sign in".
  7. Grant My Tax Digital permission to view and change your VAT information by clicking "Give permission".
  8. Confirm that the VAT registration number is correct and click "Update".
  9. Authorisation is now complete. You will be prompted to reauthorise approximately every 18 months by following the same process.

Troubleshooting

If you receive the error message "Client or agent is not authorised" after authorising, it generally means that you have either entered the wrong VAT Registration Number (VRN) or, more likely, you did not use the gateway ID linked to your HMRC VAT account during authorisation. To check your credentials, try signing into your HMRC VAT account. If the correct VRN is not displayed, you are using the wrong gateway ID.

Notes for Agents

If you are authorising on behalf of a client business, there are two important differences from the standard flow.

Which Government Gateway credentials to use

This depends on whether you have set up client authorisation through your HMRC Agent Services Account (ASA):

  • If you have ASA client authorisation in place — use your own agent Government Gateway credentials when authenticating with HMRC in step 6.
  • If you have not set up ASA client authorisation — you will need to use your client's own Government Gateway credentials at that step.

If you are unsure whether ASA authorisation is in place, log in to your Agent Services Account and check whether the client appears under your authorised clients.

The VRN confirmation screen

In step 8, you will be asked to confirm the VAT Registration Number. This should be your client's VRN, not your own. Verify it matches before clicking "Update".