Posted September 3, 2026

I’m a Landlord. Do I Need to Worry About Making Tax Digital?

If you’re a landlord and you’ve heard people talking about Making Tax Digital (MTD), you may be wondering whether it’s something you need to worry about or just another HMRC initiative that doesn’t affect you. The short answer is that many landlords will be affected, and the changes are closer than you might think.

Does Making Tax Digital Apply to Me?

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax applies to individuals with property income and/or self-employment income above certain thresholds. The threshold is based on your total combined rental and self-employed income before expenses. Landlords with rental income (not profits) over £50,000 are now within the regime from April 2026. The threshold reduces to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028.

One common misunderstanding is that HMRC looks at your profit – it doesn’t! This means a landlord receiving £35,000 of rental income and £16,000 of self-employed income could be caught by the rules, even if their actual profit is much lower.

What Will Change?

For affected landlords, the days of gathering everything together once a year for a Self Assessment tax return are coming to an end. Instead, you’ll need to keep digital records and submit quarterly updates to HMRC using compatible software. At the end of the tax year, you’ll also need to complete a final declaration to confirm your overall tax position.

For landlords who currently rely on spreadsheets, paper records or a carrier bag full of receipts, this will require setting up a new system.

A Simple Landlord Checklist

Ask yourself the following questions:

Do I receive rental income from property held in my own name?
Is my gross rental income, plus any self-employment income, above the relevant MTD threshold?
Do I currently keep digital records of my income and expenses?
Do I have software that is compatible with Making Tax Digital?
Am I confident I could produce quarterly information if HMRC asked for it tomorrow?

If you’ve answered “no” to some of these questions, now is a good time to start preparing rather than leaving it until the last minute.

How We Can Help

The reality is that most landlords didn’t get into property because they enjoy bookkeeping or quarterly tax reporting. They invested in property and now find themselves facing another layer of administration from HMRC – that’s where we can help!

We offer two levels of support for landlords affected by Making Tax Digital. For landlords who want a fully managed service, you simply provide your information each quarter and we’ll take care of the record keeping, quarterly submissions and ongoing compliance requirements for you.

Alternatively, if you’d prefer to maintain your own records, we will assess your individual requirements, help you get set up on suitable software and show you how to use it. As part of our review we look at a minimum of 6 software options to ensure you are on the best product for your circumstances, the popular software for MTD that we recommend to clients include Dext, Xero, Sage, FreeAgent, Quickbooks and Hammock. Once you know how to use the software, you keep your records up to date and we will review your information and submit the quarterly returns to HMRC and prepare the final year-end declaration, including any other sources of income that need to be reported.

This gives you the flexibility to choose the level of support that’s right for you, while having the reassurance that your Making Tax Digital obligations are being handled correctly.