Not your profit.
Your gross rent.

That depends on your qualifying income and on which tax year it was measured in. Over £50,000 was mandated from 6 April 2026, tested on the Self Assessment return you filed for 2024/25 — so that phase is live now, not coming. Over £30,000 follows on 6 April 2027, tested on the 2025/26 return, and over £20,000 on 6 April 2028, tested on 2026/27. Qualifying income of £20,000 or less is an automatic and permanent exemption. Partnerships are not currently in Making Tax Digital for Income Tax at all, and no date has been set for them. The checker on this site runs the test in the right order and tells you which April applies to you.

Your rent. HMRC measures qualifying income as total income from self-employment and property before expenses — turnover, not profit. A landlord with £45,000 of rent and £10,000 of mortgage interest is tested on £45,000, not £35,000, so the mortgage makes no difference to whether you are in. Self-employment turnover is added to the rent: £27,000 of rent plus £26,000 from a sole trade is £53,000 of qualifying income, which is inside the £50,000 phase even though neither figure is close to it on its own. A share of jointly owned property counts as that share, so £50,000 of rent split equally between two owners is £25,000 each. Employment income, dividends, partnership profit shares and pensions do not count.

No. The return survives and the deadline has not moved: 31 January following the end of the tax year. What changes is how it is filed. Once you are mandated you send four quarterly updates during the year and then file the return itself through MTD-compatible software rather than through HMRC's online Self Assessment service. The quarterly updates are summaries of income and expenses by category, not tax returns, and you do not have to make any accounting or tax adjustments before sending one. No tax is paid quarterly. Payment dates are unchanged too: the balancing payment and first payment on account on 31 January, the second payment on account on 31 July.

Since 6 April 2020 an individual letting residential property gets no deduction for finance costs. There is a basic rate tax reducer instead, worth 20% of the lowest of three figures: the finance costs, the property business profit, and adjusted total income above the personal allowance. Where the interest would all have been relieved at 40%, the direct cost is the 20-point gap — £1,800 on £9,000 of interest. The indirect cost is usually bigger. Because rent is taxed gross of interest, your total income is higher than the cash you keep, which can push you over £50,270, over £100,000 where the personal allowance tapers away, or over the High Income Child Benefit Charge threshold. Companies, and loans wholly for commercial property, are outside the restriction.

Sometimes, and often not — which is why this site will not answer it in the abstract. Incorporating does remove the Section 24 restriction, because a company deducts interest in full. It also creates a disposal to a connected company at market value, so the whole latent gain crystallises at 18% or 24% unless incorporation relief under s.162 TCGA 1992 applies — and for transfers on or after 6 April 2026 that relief has to be claimed on your tax return rather than arriving automatically. It needs a business rather than a passive portfolio on the Ramsay test. Stamp duty is charged on market value. And extraction costs more since dividend rates rose to 10.75% and 35.75% on 6 April 2026. It helps most where profits are retained rather than drawn.

The income tax side largely does. The transaction taxes do not. Stamp Duty Land Tax applies in England and Northern Ireland only. Wales has Land Transaction Tax, with higher residential rates from 11 December 2024 and no first-time buyer relief at all. Scotland has Land and Buildings Transaction Tax with an 8% Additional Dwelling Supplement on transactions from 5 December 2024. Scotland also sets its own income tax bands — six of them — so a Scottish landlord's marginal rate is not the English one. The separate property income rates announced for 6 April 2027 cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland; nothing has been set for Scotland. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is UK-wide.

A fixed monthly fee, quoted after a free review and agreed before anything starts. There is no price list on this site, because the fee depends on how many properties there are, whether they are held personally, jointly, through a partnership or in a company, whether we do the bookkeeping or check yours, and whether Making Tax Digital already applies. What we will not do is give regulated financial advice or mortgage advice, or tell you whether to buy, sell, gear up or incorporate. We explain how the tax works on your actual numbers and what each route costs. The investment decision stays yours, and a mortgage question goes to a broker.