Vat - So What are your thoughts on this..

Possibly too late for you now, but I had this exact same problem yesterday and agree it's completely silly!! Our client has already had a few surcharge notices for paying her VAT late, so I didn't want her to get another one for filing this return late - although common sense says that if we file them on Monday morning they should class that as being in on time due to this current downtime, but knowing HMRC they wouldn't see it like that! Do they expect us to come in over the weekend just to file VAT Returns cos they decide to upgrade the system on the last working days the Return is due?

I saw a message on the HMRC site near where they gave the message you quoted, that if you submit through third party software your acknowledgement will be delayed until the system is back online. So I created a new Company on Sage and posted a quick journal to generate the same figures on the VAT Return and submitted it that way. Couldn't actually get it to confirm it had sent sucessfully, but I'm hoping the email acknowledgement will arrive over the weekend. I've left it all with a colleague to check on Monday as I'm not in next week!

Clever move, HMRC!!