Making Tax Digital for Income Tax went live on 6 April 2026. If you are a UK landlord earning more than £50,000 in gross rental income, you are now legally required to maintain digital records and submit quarterly updates to HMRC. The first submission window is already open. The first quarterly deadline is 7 August 2026.
Key date. Quarter 1 covers April to June 2026. The submission to HMRC is due no later than 7 August 2026. Penalties apply from the first missed deadline.
The £50,000 threshold is measured against your gross rental income, not your profit. A landlord receiving £55,000 in rent and spending £40,000 on costs has gross income of £55,000 and is fully in scope. The threshold also aggregates across all your UK properties. If you own three buy-to-let properties with combined rent of £54,000, you are in scope whether or not any single property crosses £50,000 on its own.
If you are close to the threshold, err on the side of caution. HMRC will apply the threshold to your gross receipts as reported, and a rent review, new letting or short-term let during the year can push you over mid-year. Check your position now using the MTD compliance guide before the August deadline arrives.
Each quarterly update is a digital submission of your rental income and allowable expenses for the period. Quarter 1 runs from 6 April to 5 July 2026. HMRC expects you to report the totals under the standard income and expense categories. The figures do not have to be final, but they must be based on digital records maintained throughout the quarter, not reconstructed at the last moment from bank statements.
This is the part most landlords underestimate. The quarterly submission itself takes minutes if your records are in order. The work is in making sure those records exist, are accurate, and are categorised correctly before the deadline. A platform connected to your bank accounts via Open Banking makes this continuous rather than a quarterly scramble.
HMRC uses a points-based penalty system. Each missed quarterly submission earns one penalty point. Accumulate four points and a flat £200 fine is issued. Points do not reset until you have submitted on time for a full year. Separate interest charges apply to any tax paid late.
The points accumulate even during the transitional period. HMRC has committed to an education-first approach for the first year, which means formal financial penalties may be applied more leniently in practice. The obligation to submit, however, is not waived. Missing 7 August means a penalty point, and penalty points compound.
If you are in scope and not yet set up, here is the minimum you need to do before 7 August:
The categories of deductible expense remain the same as under the old Self Assessment regime. What changes is that they must now be recorded digitally as transactions occur, not estimated at year end. The key categories for landlords are:
Landlords who connect their bank accounts via Open Banking typically find their expense records are more complete once the platform categorises transactions automatically. Missed expenses that were previously forgotten under an annual system surface naturally in a continuous digital record.
The most common error is treating the quarterly submission as the moment to start organising records. If your first attempt at recording April to June transactions happens on 6 August, you will be relying on memory, bank statements and receipts dug out of inboxes. The submission itself takes ten minutes. Reconstructing three months of transactions from scratch takes considerably longer and produces worse results.
The fix is simple. Keep records continuously. Connect your bank accounts to your property platform on day one and let the system categorise as you go. By the time each quarterly deadline arrives, there is nothing to prepare. You review, correct if needed, and submit.
Landlords using spreadsheets face a particular challenge: spreadsheets do not qualify as digital records under the MTD rules unless used with specific MTD-compatible bridging software. A spreadsheet that you fill in manually and then upload via a bridging tool technically meets the requirement, but it introduces friction, manual error and the cost of the bridging software. Purpose-built platforms remove that entirely.
MTD compliance is available on Proxera as the Tax & Accounting Add-on, for £10 per month. When you connect your bank accounts, the add-on pulls transactions, categorises them against your properties and keeps your records current every day. Before the 7 August deadline, you log in, review your categorised Q1 records, confirm the figures, and your quarterly update is prepared ready to file. No exports. No manual filing.
The same platform gives you a live view of your portfolio yield, cashflow and net worth, so compliance and portfolio strategy sit in the same place. You can explore the full picture on the investor platform page or book a demo to see it working against your own properties.
If you are ready to get started today, plans begin free, with PROXERA+ at £19.95 per month, and Making Tax Digital compliance available via the £10/month Tax & Accounting Add-on. Setup takes around 15 minutes including the bank connection.
Thresholds, deadlines, quarterly submissions, and MTD software that prepares your records and flags what's due.
Everything you need: deadlines, thresholds, penalties and how to get compliant using MTD software.
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