Calling API to Export Data to Tax Authorities

Power BI
1

Here in the UK the tax authorities have made it mandatory that VAT returns are submitted electronically using the Making Tax Digital scheme.

This entails filling out the nine boxes on the quarterly return and submitting it to HMRC automatically.

They have provided a series of APIs to help with this.

We have a Power BI application for accounts production including the VAT data and it would be very helpful if we were able to call one of the APIs.

Is this possible?

Paul

2

I considered using Power BI for VAT returns for MTD, but found the solution that actuall worked for me was Excel with Power query and an excel addin from Vital Tax - really cheap interface to HMRC’s API. Some of the big accountancy firms wanted to charge far too much and Vital Tax costs just £12 pa and was free for first year.

Because PQ can manage huge volumes of data, it was pretty straight forward to use that as the main conduit in PQ to retrieve data from the ERP system, then a series of adjustment spreadsheets to get return right for timing.

Plainly I don’t know how complex your return is but maybe the way forward would be to use Analyse in Excel to bring you VAT return data back to Excel - ie just the 9 boxes. Then use Vital Tax to make the return.

Appreciate this doesn’t necessarily answer your tech question, but is more how I tackled the issue for a company with 10 motor dealerships

Cheers
Pete

1 Like
3

@PaulBoyes ,

I have used APIs to import data INTO Power BI, but I don’t think there’s any way to call APIs within PBI to export data OUT of the system. I’m pretty certain for this type of functionality, you’d have to cross over into Power Apps and possibly Power Automate.

Also possible that Python could perform the export. Looping eDNA Experts @henry.habib, @gmh1977 , @gjmount and @AntrikshSharma into this discussion.

  • Brian
4

Thank you for the help

I think the Excel / Vital Tax option sounds the best for now.

Paul

5

This is not something I have much familiarity with and couldn’t find too much promising online. I wonder if you could connect the report data to Excel and perhaps schedule that?