What is Making Tax Digital? A landlord's guide

Here is the slightly longer version. Instead of pulling a year's worth of figures together once, after the tax year has ended, you keep your records in software through the year and send HMRC four cumulative updates as you go. After the fourth update you add anything else (other income, reliefs, allowances) and submit a final declaration. The numbers HMRC wants are much the same as before. What changes is the rhythm: little and often, in software, rather than one big return in January.

What "for Income Tax" means (and how it differs from MTD for VAT)

MTD is not one single thing, and that is where a lot of the confusion starts. There are two separate regimes.

MTD for VAT has been running since 2019. It applies to VAT-registered businesses and is about how you record and file VAT. If you are a landlord, residential rents are exempt from VAT, so for most landlords MTD for VAT is not relevant.

MTD for Income Tax is the newer regime, and it is the one this page is about. It applies to individuals with income from UK property or self-employment above a set level. When people search "what is MTD" in 2026, this is almost always the regime they mean.

So if you have read about MTD before and it felt like it did not apply to you, check which one you were reading about. The VAT rules and the Income Tax rules are separate, with separate start dates and separate thresholds.

Making Tax Digital is live now

This is not a future plan you can park. The first wave of MTD for Income Tax went live on 6 April 2026.

It arrives in stages, set by your gross income from property and self-employment:

• Over £50,000: live now, from 6 April 2026.

• Over £30,000: from 6 April 2027.

• Over £20,000: from 6 April 2028.

That figure is gross income, before expenses, not your profit, and it combines UK property and self-employment income. Whether you are caught, and in which wave, depends on your own numbers and how your property is owned. We keep the detail (joint owners, what counts, what does not) on the page about how MTD affects landlords, and the fastest way to get a straight answer for your situation is the Am I In? calculator.

What changes compared with the old system

Under Self Assessment, you reported once a year. You added up the year's rent and expenses after 5 April and filed a single return by the following 31 January. One return, one deadline, one moment of pulling it all together.

Under MTD for Income Tax, the shape is different:

Each quarterly update is cumulative, running from 6 April, so every update is a fresh year-to-date total rather than just the latest three months. The four deadlines are 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. Then the final declaration ties everything together and replaces the Self Assessment return. For 2026/27, that final declaration is due by 31 January 2028.

What does not change

It is worth being clear about what MTD leaves alone, because the new word "quarterly" makes people assume the whole system has been rebuilt. It has not.

• How much tax you pay. The rates, the personal allowance and the way rental profit is taxed are unchanged. MTD changes reporting, not the bill.

• When you pay. Payments on account stay on 31 January and 31 July, and the balance is still due by 31 January. Sending updates more often does not mean paying more often.

• What you can claim. Allowable expenses and reliefs work the same way. You are still taxed on profit, not on the rent you collect.

In short, MTD is a change to the plumbing of how figures reach HMRC, not to what you owe or when you owe it.

What you will need

Two things, really.

First, compatible software. Quarterly updates have to be sent from software that talks to HMRC, so a spreadsheet on its own no longer covers it. Free MTD software does exist, but free and generic tools often miss the property-specific parts a landlord needs, so they can be a false economy. We compare the choices, and explain what to look for, on the page about MTD software for landlords.

Second, digital records. That means recording your rental income and expenses digitally as you go, rather than keeping a shoebox of receipts for a year-end catch-up. Record keeping that used to happen in one January sitting now spreads across the year, which is the part most landlords find takes the most getting used to.

Take George, who lets two flats and has filed his own Self Assessment for years. Nothing about his tax bill changes under MTD. What changes is that he records the rent and the agent's fee when they happen, and his software sends HMRC a running total four times a year instead of him filling in one return each January.

What to do next

You do not need to act on all of this at once, but you do need to know whether it applies to you and when.

1. Check whether you are in scope, and in which wave, with the Am I In? calculator.

2. If you are in, work through the practical steps (signing up, choosing software, the deadlines) on how to get ready for MTD.

3. If you want the wider picture for property investors, start with our guide to Making Tax Digital for landlords.

The first wave is already live, so if your property income is over £50,000 the next deadline that matters to you is 7 August. Knowing whether you are in is the first step, and it takes a couple of minutes to find out.

Once you know you're in, the next question is usually how to keep up with it through the year.