Why CSV upload is just as reliable as bank feeds - and why we're opening with it

TL;DR

CSV bank uploads and Plaid/Open Banking feeds both end up at the same place: a reconciled transaction ledger that powers your P&L, VAT return and Self Assessment. The only real differences are how data arrives and how often. Neither is magically better for your tax outcome.

TaxMTD ships today with CSV import for every UK bank and API imports for PayPal, Stripe, Wise, Revolut, GoCardless, Square, Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon Seller and Timing. Plaid Open Banking is in production review and will be switched on once approved - you can join the waitlist from /banking.

What a CSV actually gives you

Every UK bank lets you download your transactions as a CSV (Comma-Separated Values) file. It's the same file the bank's own apps use under the hood, and it contains every detail Open Banking would give you:

• date, description, amount and running balance
• merchant name and reference fields
• categorisation hints (for some banks)
• the full statement period in one file

Banks we auto-detect today:

Any other UK bank - Lloyds, Santander, TSB, Nationwide, Tide, Mettle, Allica, Countingup, Cashplus, Zempler - works too. TaxMTD falls back to a generic CSV parser that figures out which columns are date/description/amount by looking at the first few rows. If a new format ever confuses us, email support and we'll add it within 24 hours.

What bank feeds would add

Plaid Open Banking adds three things and nothing else:

1. Freshness. Transactions appear within minutes of the bank posting them, not once a month when you export a statement.
2. Zero effort. You authorise once and forget about it - no more "remind me to download March's CSV".
3. Auto-categorisation on connect. Plaid's own category system hints our AI at first pass (we ignore it after the first month because TaxMTD's own categoriser, which learns from your corrections, is usually more accurate).

That's it. Everything downstream - categorisation, VAT-box allocation, MTD quarterly filings, SA103 form mapping, Self Assessment tax calculation, Companies House accounts - is identical whether the transaction arrived via CSV or via live feed.

Why we're not waiting for Plaid to launch

Plaid's UK production approval is a serious compliance exercise. It involves FCA status checks, privacy impact assessments and a review of our data handling, and it takes real time - typically 2 to 6 weeks. We've applied and we're in the queue.

We could have delayed the product launch until Plaid is live. We chose not to, for three reasons:

1. You already have the data. You paid for your bank account, the CSV export is free, it's yours, and waiting for an API middleman to hand it back to you is faintly ridiculous.
2. Monthly is enough for tax. HMRC needs quarterly updates for MTD ITSA and quarterly returns for VAT. Monthly CSV uploads are four times more frequent than the legal deadline and already give you better financial visibility than most sole traders in Britain have.
3. CSVs don't break. Bank feeds fail - APIs deprecate, banks rotate consent tokens every 90 days, Plaid occasionally has outages. CSVs work the same way every time.

The workflow today

1. Log into your bank (once a month, or whenever you want a snapshot)
2. Download transactions as CSV - most banks put this under Statements → Download → CSV
3. Drag the file onto /banking in TaxMTD
4. We auto-categorise with AI, you correct anything we got wrong, the correction is remembered forever
5. Run reports, file MTD updates, submit Self Assessment - all the numbers are there

Step 4 is the only one that requires human attention, and on a typical 80-transaction month it takes 5-10 minutes. The same review happens with bank feeds - only the fetch step is automated.

What changes when Plaid goes live

When we're approved:

• The "Open Banking" tile on /banking flips from Coming soon to Connect
• Everyone on the waitlist gets an email
• You keep your existing CSV-imported history - nothing resets, nothing migrates, the two data paths merge transparently on the same ledger
• You'll be able to disconnect the feed and go back to CSV any time

Honest comparison

Join the waitlist

If you want an email the moment Plaid feeds switch on, visit /banking and click Notify me when bank feeds go live. We'll only send one email per person and it'll go out the day we flip the switch.

Until then - CSV away. Your P&L and your Self Assessment will look exactly the same.