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FeaturesMaking Tax DigitalUpdated March 4, 2026

Known Gap: Quarterly Submission Archive & Soft-Delete

Known Gap: Quarterly Submission Archive & Soft-Delete

Status: Not yet implemented — tracked in backlog Severity: High Affects: All landlords and self-employed taxpayers using the platform across multiple quarters or tax years

Overview

The Making Tax Digital compliance platform does not currently support archiving or soft-deleting quarterly submissions. This page documents what is missing, why it matters, and what to expect when the feature ships.

What Is Missing

1. No archived Submission Status

The quarterly_summaries table currently supports the following status values:

StatusDescription
draftSubmission created but not yet sent
pendingAwaiting submission to HMRC
submittingSubmission in progress
submittedSuccessfully submitted to HMRC
failedSubmission attempt failed
rejectedRejected by HMRC

There is no archived status. Records cannot be flagged as hidden or inactive.

2. No Archive tRPC Mutation

There is no server-side mutation available to archive a quarterly summary record. This means no archive action can be triggered from the UI or the API.

3. No UI for Managing Archived Submissions

The quarterly submissions page has no controls to:

  • Archive an individual submission
  • Hide archived submissions from the default view
  • Restore a previously archived submission
  • Filter by archive status

Impact

This gap most significantly affects users who:

  • Have been using the platform across multiple tax years and have accumulated many historical draft submissions
  • Created erroneous draft submissions that cannot be removed from the quarterly page
  • Want to keep the quarterly submissions view focused on current, actionable submissions only

Without archive/soft-delete, the quarterly page grows unbounded over time and provides no way to reduce clutter or separate active submissions from historical ones.

Workaround

There is currently no supported workaround. Unwanted draft submissions will remain visible on the quarterly submissions page. Users are advised to:

  • Avoid creating draft submissions unless actively working on them
  • Use submission notes or naming conventions to distinguish active from inactive drafts (if supported by the UI)

What to Expect When This Ships

The planned implementation will include:

  • Database: An archived status added to the quarterly_summaries status enum
  • API: A new tRPC mutation — archiveQuarterlySubmission — to soft-delete a submission by transitioning it to archived status
  • UI: Archive controls on the quarterly submissions page, along with the ability to view and restore archived submissions

This will be a non-destructive (soft-delete) operation — archived submissions will be retained in the database for audit trail purposes but hidden from the default view.

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