Making Tax Digital for landlords: what changes, and when

Say you let out 2 flats. The rent lands on the same day each month, the boiler gets serviced once a year, and the whole thing lives in a spreadsheet you started years ago. Making Tax Digital for Income Tax changes how you report that rent to HMRC. It applies to UK property landlords and to sole traders. Not everyone who works for themselves is a sole trader, and the other ways of being self-employed are outside these rules for now. Landlord, in this article, means someone with property in the UK.

Here is the belief this guide is built on: letting out 2 flats or more should not require you to learn accounting software. HMRC wants 4 sets of totals a year and a tax return, and that can be done without the new rules adding much work to your year. This guide explains what HMRC is actually asking for, and how we built EasyInvoice to take the heaviest part of it off your hands.

Does this apply to you?

The test is your qualifying income, and the answer depends on which tax year HMRC is looking at.

Qualifying income is your total income from self-employment and property before expenses, so for a landlord it is the rent you received, not your profit. HMRC measures it on the tax return for the year in the table below. If your qualifying income for the 2024 to 2025 tax year was over £50,000, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has applied to you since 6 April 2026. You can still sign up. The rules apply if you are a sole trader or a landlord registered for Self Assessment.

The 3 thresholds arrive 1 year apart, and each one looks back at a different tax return:

Source: GOV.UK, find out if and when you need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax.

Rent and self-employment are added together for this test. HMRC’s own example: £25,000 from rental income plus £27,000 from self-employment is £52,000 of qualifying income, over the £50,000 line even though neither figure is on its own. 2 numbers, 1 test.

HMRC should have written to you if you were over £50,000 for the 2024 to 2025 tax year. If you did not get a letter, it is still your responsibility to check. Signing up is a step you take, not something that happens to you, and we have written up how to do it.

If Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has applied to you since 6 April 2026 and you have not sent a single quarterly update yet, you have not missed your chance. You can still choose software that works with it and start adding your income and expenses, catching up from the start of the tax year. HMRC will not apply penalty points for late quarterly updates during the 2026 to 2027 tax year. That covers the updates only: you still need to send them before you can submit your tax return, late tax returns still get penalty points, and late payment penalties still apply to tax paid late.

It is still worth sending your updates before the 2026 to 2027 tax year ends on 5 April 2027. You get to practise the routine in a year when a late update costs no points, because from the 2027 to 2028 tax year, every missed update deadline does.

What actually changes, and what stays the same

Most landlords who hear “quarterly” assume the tax return is going away and 4 smaller returns are taking its place. That is the wrong model, so let us take it apart first.

2 things are new. You keep digital records of your property income and expenses, and you send HMRC a summary of them 4 times a year. If Making Tax Digital for Income Tax applies to you, you send your quarterly updates through software that works with it. You still send a Self Assessment tax return for the tax year before you start.

What stays is the tax return. Quarterly updates are summaries, not tax returns. You still send a tax return after the end of the tax year. So the tax return is not replaced. The quarterly updates are added. You do both.

A builder who also lets out his old flat, a piano tutor with a buy-to-let, a landlord with 2 flats and nothing else: the update has the same shape for all 3. Income totals, expense totals, sent 4 times a year. The rules are fixed. How much work they make is not.

What you have to record

A digital record is less than it sounds. For each amount of rent that comes in and each expense that goes out, you record how much it was, the date, and which category it falls into. What a record must contain is set out on GOV.UK, and we go through the minimum data in a separate guide.

In practice, a month for 2 flats looks something like this. The rows are examples of the shape, not a complete list, and whether a particular expense counts is a question for HMRC’s guidance or your accountant, not for this table:

Which date goes on the record depends on how you work out your profit. With cash basis, you record income when you receive the money and an expense when you pay the bill. With traditional accounting, you record them by the date you invoiced or were billed. In EasyInvoice, which works with both methods, those records can be the invoices you already send your tenants. If you do not invoice, you add the rent or the expense as an income or expense entry instead.

Here is the part that calms people down. What HMRC receives in a quarterly update is a total for each category, not the entries behind it. The individual entries, the receipts and the photo of the gas certificate stay with you. The list is yours. HMRC gets the sum.

When you send, and what you send

Standard update periods run from 6 April, and the deadlines are the same every year:

Source: GOV.UK, send quarterly updates.

If your accounting period runs from 1 April to 31 March, you can use calendar update periods instead. They end on the last day of the month, and the deadlines stay the same:

Source: GOV.UK, send quarterly updates. You choose calendar periods in your software before your first quarterly update, and you cannot change them for a tax year once an update has been sent.

Each update covers the tax year to date, not just the last 3 months. That is less work, not more: because every update carries the running total from the start of the tax year, you can correct your records without resending previous updates. A missed receipt in June simply lands in the next total. The total catches up. For the full calendar and what happens around each date, see our guide to the deadlines.

If you are a landlord and something else as well

Plenty of landlords are also something else: the builder with a flat, the tutor with a buy-to-let. For the threshold, the 2 incomes are added together, as in HMRC’s £52,000 example above.

In EasyInvoice, the 2 sides of your working life stay apart. Your sole trader work and your UK property are separate income sources, each with its own quarterly update, so the builder’s invoices and the flat’s rent never end up in the same total. You can run up to 3 businesses in 1 account. If you started as a sole trader and the property came later, this guide covers that path. Same app, 2 updates.

What about jointly owned property?

If you own a property with someone else, only your share of the rent counts towards your qualifying income. HMRC’s example is 2 siblings who share £50,000 of rental income equally: £25,000 counts for each of them.

The same logic runs through the records. You keep digital records for your share only. For jointly owned property, you can send quarterly updates with property income only and report the expenses after the end of the tax year, by resending your fourth update before you submit your tax return.

How the shares are split between owners is outside this article. That part belongs to HMRC’s guidance and to your accountant. Your share, your records.

Is there free software for landlords?

Yes. HMRC’s list of software includes free products, and some of them come with limits. HMRC does not recommend any product or software provider, so the choice is yours.

Free or paid, any tool still needs the totals from somewhere. Someone has to record the rent, the agent’s fee and the gas check before there is anything to add up. If you are weighing a bridging tool against a dedicated app, we compare both here. Nobody became a landlord because they enjoy data entry.

How EasyInvoice fits in

In EasyInvoice, the invoices you already send become your digital records.

Your records come from work you already do

• • If you invoice your tenants, that invoice is the record, with 2 extra fields when you create it: income source and category. Neither shows on the document your tenant sees.
• • If the rent simply arrives by standing order, you add it as an income entry with the same source and category.
• • Expenses go in the same way, with up to 5 photos or scans per record for your own files. They never go to HMRC.

The quarter adds itself up

• • EasyInvoice builds the running total for each income source from the start of the tax year to the end of the period, for standard and calendar periods alike.
• • Before you send, you see the transactions going into the update and an approval screen.
• • What reaches HMRC is the category totals, not the entries.
• • If a source has nothing to report, EasyInvoice lets you send a zero update for it.
• • The home screen reminds you in the 10 days before each deadline.

You send it, and you see what HMRC received

• • The quarterly updates are yours to send from the app. The annual tax return can stay with your accountant, as it probably does today.
• • After you send, you see the status HMRC returns, and FULFILLED means HMRC has received it.
• • The history shows what went in the last update.
• • You can also show HMRC’s tax estimate. EasyInvoice displays it; HMRC calculates it. It is there to help you plan what to set aside, not a final bill.

Where it works, and where it does not

• • MTD in EasyInvoice runs on iPhone and in the browser, so a Mac or Windows laptop works through the web. The Android app does not include MTD.
• • Premium is built for UK businesses that are not VAT registered.
• • If you are registered for VAT, or your property is outside the UK, EasyInvoice Premium is not the right fit and you will want software that covers those cases.

We would rather say that here than on your first update.

What it costs, and how to try it first

• • Premium costs £8.99 a month or £89.99 a year, which is 2 months free when billed yearly.
• • The free trial is 14 days with no card.
• • If you turn on MTD during the trial, it runs for 3 months instead, so you can keep a full quarter of your own records in it before you pay.

What HMRC’s recognition covers

EasyInvoice is recognised by HMRC for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: digital records and quarterly updates for sole traders and UK property landlords. HMRC does not recommend any product or software provider. What the recognition covers in practice is in this walkthrough. Invoicing and records. Not accounting.

FAQ

Do landlords have to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax?

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax applies to UK property landlords and sole traders registered for Self Assessment whose qualifying income is over the threshold for the tax year HMRC is measuring: over £50,000 for the 2024 to 2025 tax year, then £30,000 and £20,000 in the following 2 years. Qualifying income means the rent you received before expenses, added to any self-employment income.

When does Making Tax Digital start for landlords?

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has applied since 6 April 2026 if your qualifying income for the 2024 to 2025 tax year was over £50,000, and you can still sign up. It applies from 6 April 2027 if you were over £30,000 for the 2025 to 2026 tax year, and from 6 April 2028 if you were over £20,000 for the 2026 to 2027 tax year.

What does HMRC actually require from landlords under Making Tax Digital?

HMRC requires 3 things from a landlord under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax: digital records of property income and expenses, quarterly updates sent through software that works with Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, and a tax return after the end of the tax year. The quarterly updates are summaries of the records, not tax returns.

Do quarterly updates replace my tax return?

No. Quarterly updates are summaries, not tax returns, and you still send a tax return after the end of the tax year.

Can my accountant send the updates for me?

Your accountant cannot send your quarterly updates for you from EasyInvoice, because the app does not support filing by an agent on a client’s behalf. You send the updates yourself from the app, and the annual tax return can stay with your accountant.

Does EasyInvoice work for property outside the UK?

No. EasyInvoice Premium is built for UK property landlords and sole traders with a UK business working in pounds, and income from property outside the UK is not something we support. Whether Making Tax Digital for Income Tax applies to you at all is a separate question, and HMRC’s guidance is the place to check it.