MTD for landlords: am I in, and when?

How to read your result

The verdict at the top is the answer to the only question that matters: which April you are mandated from, and which tax year's Self Assessment return decides it. There are three phases and they are already running. Qualifying income over £50,000, tested on the 2024/25 return, was mandated from 6 April 2026 — that date has passed, so for those landlords this is live rather than approaching. Over £30,000, tested on the 2025/26 return, follows on 6 April 2027. Over £20,000, tested on the 2026/27 return, follows on 6 April 2028. At or below £20,000 the exemption is automatic and permanent.

The figure the phases are tested against is your qualifying income for the year named, taken from the return you filed in the previous tax year. This tool uses the numbers you typed as a stand-in for that return, which is close enough to tell you where you stand and not the same thing as the return itself. If your rent has moved materially since the year in question, the return is what decides it.

Qualifying income is gross rent before expenses

This is the point most often misunderstood, and it is worth being blunt about. HMRC defines qualifying income as your 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 on £35,000, and not on the couple of thousand of cash profit that is actually left at the end of the year. Agent's fees, repairs, insurance, ground rent, service charges, accountancy and every other legitimate deduction make no difference at all to this test.

Two consequences follow. The first is that a geared landlord can be pushed into quarterly reporting on a portfolio that barely washes its face. The second is that property and self-employment turnover are added together for one combined test — HMRC's own worked example puts £25,000 of rental income alongside £27,000 of self-employment income and gets £52,000, which is in scope. If you let a couple of flats and do some consultancy on the side, neither figure on its own tells you anything.

Jointly owned property is treated the way you would hope: your share of the property income counts towards your qualifying income, so £50,000 of rent split equally between two owners is £25,000 each. That is why the joint ownership question sits in the calculator, and why couples routinely find that one of them is in scope and the other is not.

What is not qualifying income

Employment income taxed under PAYE does not count. Nor does your share of a partnership's profit, nor dividends — including dividends from your own company — nor the State Pension, nor private pensions. A landlord with a £70,000 salary and £18,000 of rent is not in scope on the salary, because the salary is simply not part of the test. It is a narrow definition and it cuts both ways.

Partnerships are not currently in scope for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax and no start date has been set for them. If your property is held through a genuine partnership, the partnership is outside the regime for now, and your profit share is not qualifying income in your own hands either. That is a real planning point and also a trap: a jointly held property between spouses is not automatically a partnership.

What being in scope means

Digital records of rent and expenses from the first day of the tax year you join. Four quarterly updates a year, for the periods ending 5 July, 5 October, 5 January and 5 April, due on 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May — calendar quarters can be elected instead and the deadlines are the same. Each update is a summary of totals by income and expense category, not a tax return: no accounting or tax adjustments are needed before you send it, and HMRC does not receive individual digital records such as a receipt or an invoice.

Two things people expect that are not true. You do not pay tax quarterly. MTD does not change how or when tax is paid — 31 January and 31 July are untouched. And the Self Assessment return still exists; it is filed through MTD-compatible software instead of HMRC's online service, with the same 31 January deadline, and HMRC pre-populates employment, pension and state benefit income. On penalties, there are no penalties for missing a quarterly update deadline in the 2026/27 tax year. After that, late submission is points-based: one point per missed update or return, a £200 penalty at four points, and £200 for each further miss.

What to do about it this week

If your result says you are already in, the first job is the records rather than the software. Rent and expenses tracked per property, digitally, from the start of the tax year is what makes the quarterly cycle a five-minute job instead of a four-times-a-year scramble — that is what the property bookkeeping page covers, and the Making Tax Digital page sets out the full obligation with its dates. If you have a year or two before your phase starts, use it: the landlords who found April 2026 uneventful were the ones already keeping records digitally.

While you are here, two other numbers are worth having. The Section 24 calculator shows what the finance cost restriction is costing you, which for a geared landlord is usually a larger figure than anything MTD does, and it runs off the same gross rent you have just typed in. Every date that matters is on the landlord tax calendar. And if you would rather have the answer checked against your actual return than typed in from memory, a free property tax review does exactly that — we will tell you if there is nothing to do.