Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is live. If your rental income is over £50,000, you are already in it, and you have to file quarterly updates to HMRC instead of one annual Self Assessment return. This guide sets out who is affected, the exact dates, what each submission involves, and the mistakes that catch landlords out. None of it is as bad as it sounds once you have the right software connected.
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Do you actually have to do this?
You are in MTD for Income Tax from 6 April 2026 if your qualifying income was over £50,000. The threshold then drops, so more landlords are pulled in each year:
- From April 2026: qualifying income over £50,000.
- From April 2027: over £30,000.
- From April 2028: over £20,000.
Two details trip landlords up. First, qualifying income is gross, not profit. It is your total rent before any expenses, mortgage interest, or allowances come off. A landlord with £52,000 of rent and £20,000 of costs is in, because HMRC looks at the £52,000, not the £32,000 profit.
Second, it is your combined income that counts. If you are a landlord and also self-employed, you add the two together against the threshold. But if you have a PAYE job alongside renting, the salary does not count towards qualifying income, only the rent and any self-employment do. And if you own a property jointly, only your share of the rent counts as yours.
HMRC works out your start date from the most recent Self Assessment return before your phase begins, so your 2024/25 return is what determines whether you are in from April 2026. If you are not sure where you stand, check in under a minute.
The dates you cannot miss
MTD replaces one annual return with four quarterly updates and a final declaration. For the 2026/27 tax year the quarterly deadlines are fixed:
- Quarter 1 (6 April to 5 July 2026): due 7 August 2026.
- Quarter 2 (6 July to 5 October 2026): due 7 November 2026.
- Quarter 3 (6 October to 5 January 2027): due 7 February 2027.
- Quarter 4 (6 January to 5 April 2027): due 7 May 2027.
- Final declaration for 2026/27: due 31 January 2028.
The same dates repeat every year, shifted by a year for later phases. If you have more than one income source, for example two rental businesses, or rent plus self-employment, you submit a separate quarterly update for each, though good software handles them all in one place.
One thing that confuses people: MTD changes how often you report, not when you pay. Your tax is still due on 31 January and 31 July as before. The quarterly updates do not create a payment; they are summaries of income and costs, not bills.
What a quarterly update actually is
A quarterly update is a digital summary of your rental income and expenses for the three-month period. It is not a full tax return and you do not make tax adjustments or claim reliefs at this stage. You report the totals, and that is it. The detailed work, the allowances and the final tax position, happens once at the year end in the final declaration, which replaces your old Self Assessment return.
To file a quarterly update you need to keep digital records during the quarter, then submit the totals through HMRC-recognised software. With an open banking bank feed, most of this happens automatically: your rent and costs come in from your account, get categorised, and the totals are ready to send. Without it, you are typing transactions in by hand.
The first-year soft landing, and where it does not protect you
HMRC has confirmed a soft landing for the 2026/27 tax year only. During this first year, no penalty points are issued for late quarterly updates. It is breathing room to get used to the system, and it applies only to the first cohort, not to those joining in 2027 or 2028.
Be careful about what the soft landing does not cover. It does not protect your final declaration, which still attracts a penalty point if it is late after 31 January 2028. And it does not touch late payment, which runs on a completely separate regime with its own charges and interest. From 2027/28, the normal points system applies to quarterly updates too: each missed deadline is one point, four points trigger a £200 fine, and a further £200 follows each late submission after that.
The honest takeaway is to use the soft-landing year to build the habit rather than to ignore the deadlines. The landlords who struggle in year two are the ones who treated year one as optional.
Mistakes that catch landlords out
A few specific things go wrong on landlord MTD submissions more than anything else:
- Putting mortgage interest in the wrong place. Only the interest portion of your mortgage payment is relevant, never the capital repayment, and mortgage interest is treated as a finance cost under Section 24, not a normal allowable expense. We cover this in detail in our Section 24 guide.
- Forgetting short-let income. Money from Airbnb, VRBO, or similar still counts and still has to be reported.
- Leaving it to July. The April-to-July quarter has to be reconciled before the 7 August deadline. Connecting software and a bank feed early turns this into a five-minute job rather than a scramble.
- Not keeping receipts digitally. A repair you cannot evidence is a deduction you may lose.
Getting a quarterly figure slightly wrong is not a disaster, because it is corrected at the year end. But errors that repeat every quarter mean your running tax estimate is off, which causes surprises later.
Compliance is now part of the picture too
MTD is not the only thing that changed for landlords. Since Section 21 no-fault evictions were abolished on 1 May 2026, every possession runs through the evidence-based Section 8 process, and your compliance paperwork is part of any case. Keeping your gas, electrical, deposit, and other records in order, and being able to prove they were valid when it mattered, now sits alongside your tax filing as something you cannot let slide. We explain the proof side in our guide to proving your rental property is compliant.
How VoxaMTD handles landlord MTD
VoxaMTD is HMRC-recognised software that files your quarterly updates and final declaration directly to HMRC, for free. The free tier includes an open banking bank feed, AI categorisation of your transactions, receipt capture, and running tax estimates, so the quarterly job is mostly done for you. When you want them, paid landlord tiers add property tools and an externally timestamped compliance record, but the filing itself, the part HMRC made mandatory, is never charged for.
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VoxaMTD is HMRC-recognised software for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. This guide is general information about MTD for landlords in England and is not tax or legal advice. Dates and thresholds are current at the time of writing; check GOV.UK or take advice for your own circumstances.