Making Tax Digital for landlords
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is now live for landlords with qualifying income above £50,000, and reaches most of the rest of the market over the following two years. It is less dramatic than it sounds — there is no extra tax and nothing new to pay four times a year — but it does end one specific habit permanently: working out the year's figures from a pile of paperwork the January after it finished.
This page covers who is in scope and when, what a quarterly update actually contains, what HMRC means by a digital record and a digital link, and how to be ready without rebuilding how you work. It is general information, not tax advice.
Who joins, and when
6 April 2026 — Qualifying income above £50,000
Already in force. The first quarterly update for this group covered 6 April – 5 July 2026, due 7 August 2026.
6 April 2027 — Qualifying income above £30,000
The largest single group of landlords by number.
6 April 2028 — Qualifying income above £20,000
At this point most landlords with more than one property are in scope.
The threshold is tested against qualifying income: gross rent received plus any sole-trader turnover, before a single expense is deducted. A landlord with three flats at £900 a month is above £30,000 on rent alone and joins in April 2027, regardless of what the mortgage takes out of it.
The four dates in your year
Standard quarters follow the tax year, and each deadline is exactly one month and two days after the period ends. A landlord can ask HMRC for calendar-month quarters instead; most do not.
| Quarter covers | Update due |
|---|---|
| 6 April – 5 July | 7 August |
| 6 July – 5 October | 7 November |
| 6 October – 5 January | 7 February |
| 6 January – 5 April | 7 May |
Updates are cumulative, so a correction to Q1 is simply carried into Q2 rather than resubmitted. Then one final declaration a year replaces the Self Assessment return, and that is where the tax is actually calculated.
The part that actually changes: digital records and digital links
Almost all the real work of MTD is here, and it is the part that gets least attention because it is not a deadline.
A digital record, in practice
Every rent receipt and every expense recorded electronically, near the time it happened, with its date, amount and category. A spreadsheet counts. What no longer counts is a drawer of invoices added up at the end of the year — not because the total would be wrong, but because the record did not exist digitally when the transaction did.
A digital link, in practice
Once a figure is in your records, it has to reach HMRC without a human retyping it. Linked cells, imports, and software totalling its own data are all fine. Reading £4,320 off one screen and typing it into another is the one thing the rule exists to stop, and it is exactly what most landlords do today.
This is why “MTD software” is not really about the submission button. The submission is the easy part. The requirement is an unbroken digital chain from the moment money moves to the moment HMRC sees the total.
Jointly owned property
Each owner reports their own share, so a couple owning a flat between them each keep records for their own half and each submit their own updates. Whether either of them is in scope depends on their own qualifying income, which means one spouse can be mandated while the other is not.
Where LetBuddy is on this, stated plainly
LetBuddy is not yet on the GOV.UK list of MTD-compatible software, and we are not going to imply otherwise while landlords are choosing where to put their records. The integration is built against HMRC's official API and tested end to end in their sandbox; the production credentials application is with HMRC and the feature is marked coming soon in the product until it lands.
What works today is the part that takes a year to get right rather than an afternoon: rent and expenses recorded digitally against HMRC's own categories as they happen, bank statements imported and matched rather than re-keyed, quarterly totals calculated from those records, and the quarter deadline sitting in the same reminder system as your gas safety certificate. When submission goes live, the records are already in the shape it needs — and it is included in the price, never an add-on.
Tax year 2026/27 · Quarter 2
6 Jul – 5 Oct 2026
This quarter
Rental income
Across 6 properties
Premises running costs
Insurance, ground rent, service charges
Repairs & maintenance
9 logged jobs, receipts attached
Professional fees
Letting agent, accountancy
Quarterly update
Records are already in the shape HMRC's API needs. Submission arrives before it's mandatory for you.
Your first property is free forever. No card required.
Common questions
- Do landlords have to use Making Tax Digital?
- If your qualifying income is above the threshold for your year, yes. From 6 April 2026 it applies above £50,000, from April 2027 above £30,000, and from April 2028 above £20,000. Qualifying income is turnover before expenses — total rent received plus any self-employment income — not profit, which catches out landlords who assume a modest profit keeps them out of scope.
- What is a quarterly update, and is it a tax return?
- No, it is not a return and it is not a payment. A quarterly update is a cumulative summary of your property income and expenses by category, sent to HMRC through compatible software. There is no tax calculation and nothing to pay at that point. The actual figures are finalised once a year in a final declaration, which replaces the Self Assessment return.
- What counts as a digital record for MTD?
- Each transaction has to be recorded digitally near the time it happens — the amount, the date, and the category — and the figures that reach HMRC must get there by digital link rather than by being re-typed. A spreadsheet can be a digital record. A shoebox of receipts totalled in January is not, and neither is reading a figure off one screen and typing it into another.
- What is a digital link?
- An electronic transfer of data between the places your records live, with no manual re-keying in between. Linked spreadsheet cells, an import, an API call, and software calculating a total from its own records all qualify. Copying a number by hand does not, even if you copy it accurately.
- Are there penalties for getting quarterly updates wrong in the first year?
- HMRC has said no late-submission penalties apply to quarterly updates for the 2026/27 tax year for those mandated from 6 April 2026. That relaxation does not extend to the end-of-year return for 2026/27, which is still due by 31 January 2028. Treat the first year as a year to get your record-keeping right without fear, not as a year to ignore.
- Do I still need an accountant under MTD?
- MTD changes how records reach HMRC, not whether your tax position needs judgement. Most landlords who used an accountant before still will. What changes is that your accountant should be working from records that are already complete and categorised, rather than reconstructing a year from bank statements each January.
- Is LetBuddy compatible with Making Tax Digital?
- LetBuddy is built against HMRC's official MTD for Income Tax API and has been tested end to end in HMRC's sandbox, and an application for production credentials is with HMRC. Until that is granted and LetBuddy appears on the GOV.UK list of compatible software, we do not describe ourselves as HMRC-recognised, and the submission feature stays marked as coming soon in the product. The record-keeping side — digital, categorised, digitally linked — works today.
General information as at August 2026, not tax advice. Thresholds, deadlines and penalty rules are set by HMRC and can change — check GOV.UK for the current position and speak to an accountant about your own circumstances.