Making Tax Digital for Income Tax stopped being a future problem on 6 April 2026. If your gross rents (plus any self-employment turnover) were over £50,000 on the tax return you filed for 2024-25, you are in it right now, and your first quarterly update is due by 7 August 2026. That is weeks away, and in our experience most landlords still cannot say what is actually in that submission.
We are portfolio landlords ourselves, so we have been through the same "wait, does this apply to me?" moment. This is the plain-English version we wanted someone to write for us: who is caught now, what the 7 August update contains, and what to set up this month so the other three deadlines are boring.
The 10-minute version
- MTD for Income Tax is live. From 6 April 2026 it is mandatory for sole traders and landlords whose qualifying income was more than £50,000. The threshold drops to more than £30,000 from April 2027 and more than £20,000 from April 2028 (gov.uk, "Find out if and when you need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax").
- Qualifying income means gross, not profit. It is your rent before a single expense, added to any self-employment turnover. A heavily mortgaged landlord with tiny profits can easily be over the line.
- Your first quarterly update covers 6 April to 5 July 2026 and is due by 7 August 2026. Then 7 November, 7 February and 7 May, every year.
- A quarterly update is not a tax return. It is a summary of income and expense totals by category, sent from software. No tax is calculated and nothing is paid at that point.
- You can keep your spreadsheet if you pair it with bridging software that files the update digitally.
- Payment dates do not change. You still finalise everything in a year-end return by 31 January, and you pay tax on the same dates as before.
Now the detail, with numbers.
Am I in scope right now?
HMRC decides from your most recent filed Self Assessment return. For the April 2026 start, that is the 2024-25 return you filed by 31 January 2026. If the gross income from property and self-employment on that return was over £50,000, you should already be in MTD, keeping digital records from 6 April 2026.
The trap is the word gross. Take a landlord with three terraced houses bringing in £4,550 a month between them. That is £54,600 a year of rent. After mortgage interest, agent fees, insurance and repairs, the actual profit might be £11,000. It does not matter: £54,600 is over £50,000, so this landlord is in the first wave. Thin margins do not get you out, because the test is turnover, not what you keep. (If those margins sting, that is Section 24 doing its work, which is a separate article.)
Income streams also combine. £28,000 of rent plus £24,000 of freelance turnover is £52,000 of qualifying income, so you are in from April 2026 even though neither source alone crosses the line.
What about jointly owned property?
You count only your share. A couple owning a portfolio 50/50 with £84,000 of combined rent each have £42,000 of qualifying income. Neither is in the 2026 wave; both are pulled in from April 2027 when the threshold falls to £30,000.
HMRC has also confirmed easements for joint owners to cut the admin: you can report only your share of income in each quarterly update and deal with your share of expenses once a year, and you can keep a single digital record per category for the jointly held property rather than logging every transaction (see the ICAEW and ATT guidance on jointly owned property). These are optional and you do not need to apply for them, but check the current detail before you lean on them.
If you are near a threshold, our MTD thresholds guide walks through more edge cases.
What do I actually submit each quarter?
Less than most people fear. A quarterly update is the totals of your property income and expenses for the period, broken down by the same kinds of category you already use on the property pages of a tax return: rent received, repairs and maintenance, professional fees, insurance, and so on. Your software adds up the digital records and sends the totals.
Three things it is not:
- Not a tax calculation. HMRC's own guidance is explicit that a quarterly update is not a tax return and you do not need to make accounting or tax adjustments before sending it. No reliefs, no allowances, no finalising.
- Not a payment trigger. Nothing is due when you file an update. Payment dates are unchanged.
- Not carved in stone. Updates are cumulative year-to-date totals, so if you mis-keyed something in the quarter to 5 July, the corrected running total in your next update fixes it. Accuracy is finalised at year end, not quarter by quarter.
So the 7 August submission for a landlord is, in substance: "here is my rent received and my expenses by category for 6 April to 5 July 2026". If your records are up to date, it is minutes of work. If your records are a folder of statements you were planning to face next January, it is not.
Can I keep my spreadsheet?
Yes. MTD requires digital records and digital filing, not a particular product. You have two routes:
- MTD-compatible software that both stores the records and files the updates. HMRC publishes a list of recognised products, including some free ones.
- Your spreadsheet plus bridging software. You keep recording income and expenses in the spreadsheet, and a bridging tool reads the totals and files them. The one rule is that the link must be digital from end to end: the bridging tool must pull figures from the spreadsheet via a digital link, not have you retype them.
What is no longer allowed, once you are mandated, is the shoebox: paper records, or figures that only exist in your head until January. Each transaction (or, for joint property using the easement, each category total) needs to live in a digital record.
The key dates, in one table
Standard quarters follow the tax year, and every deadline is on the 7th:
| Update covers | Due by |
|---|---|
| 6 Apr 2026 to 5 Jul 2026 | 7 August 2026 |
| 6 Apr 2026 to 5 Oct 2026 | 7 November 2026 |
| 6 Apr 2026 to 5 Jan 2027 | 7 February 2027 |
| 6 Apr 2026 to 5 Apr 2027 | 7 May 2027 |
| Year-end tax return for 2026-27 | 31 January 2028 |
If tax-year quarters annoy your bookkeeping, you can elect calendar quarters in your software (periods ending 30 June, 30 September, 31 December, 31 March). The deadlines stay exactly the same, so the quarter to 30 June 2026 is still due by 7 August 2026. You make the election before your first update of the year and it applies to all four.
The year-end return (HMRC has called this the final declaration) replaces the Self Assessment return. That is where reliefs, allowances and any other income go, and where your bill is actually worked out. Same 31 January deadline, same payment dates as today.
What happens if I miss a deadline?
Late submissions run on a points system rather than instant fines. Each missed deadline earns a penalty point, and once you hit the threshold (four points for quarterly filers) you get a £200 penalty, with a further £200 for each miss after that. Points expire after a period of good behaviour, so one bad quarter does not follow you forever.
For this first year, professional bodies including ICAEW have reported that HMRC will not charge late submission penalties on quarterly updates for 2026-27 while everyone finds their feet. We would treat that as a safety net, not a plan: the points regime is the long-term reality, and the year-end return and payment deadlines carry teeth as usual, with interest and escalating penalties on late paid tax.
If you genuinely cannot use digital tools, exemptions exist: digital exclusion on grounds of age, disability, location without internet access, or religious belief, and specific carve-outs (for example, trust income and some other cases sit outside MTD for now). You have to apply to HMRC for most of them and the bar is high, so do not assume you qualify because you would rather not bother.
What we would do this month
If you are in the 2026 wave, July is the month that decides whether 7 August is calm or chaotic:
- Confirm your number. Pull gross rent plus any self-employment turnover from your 2024-25 return. Over £50,000 and you are in now; over £30,000 and April 2027 is your date, so this is your dress rehearsal year.
- Check you are signed up. Mandated landlords need to be registered for MTD for Income Tax on gov.uk, not just aware of it.
- Pick your route: software or spreadsheet plus bridging. Do it this week, not on 5 August, because you need your April-to-July transactions in it before you can file anything.
- Reconstruct the first quarter now. Rent received and expenses by category, 6 April to 5 July 2026, from bank statements and agent statements while they are easy to find.
- Then log as you go. The real shift MTD asks for is little-and-often record keeping. Ten minutes a month beats a quarterly archaeology dig.
Where Padlord fits, honestly
Padlord is not MTD filing software, and we will not pretend otherwise: you still need an HMRC-recognised product or bridging tool to submit the updates. What Padlord does is the part that actually takes the time, which is keeping clean per-property records of rent and expenses all year, in the categories a quarterly update needs, with the documents attached. When each 7th-of-the-month deadline comes round, you are copying totals you already trust into your filing tool instead of rebuilding a quarter from bank statements. That record-keeping habit is nine tenths of MTD; the filing click is the easy tenth.
This is general information, not tax or financial advice. Thresholds, deadlines and penalty rules are as published at July 2026; check the current guidance on gov.uk or speak to an accountant before you act.
