MTD for ITSA: 2026 Rollout Plan for Accountants

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax goes live on 6 April 2026 for the first cohort, and most of the planning advice in circulation comes from software vendors. This is a working rollout plan from a tools-agnostic angle.

Who is in scope from April 2026

Mandation is phased by 'qualifying income': gross turnover from self-employment plus UK property, before expenses. Not profit. Not net. Gross.

Below £20,000 is out of scope, with a further extension under consultation but not legislated. Partnerships are deferred indefinitely. Companies are out entirely; they have their own thing coming, eventually.

Source checked against GOV.UK Use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax guidance, updated 2 June 2026. The current GOV.UK thresholds are: 2024/25 tax return showed qualifying income over £50,000 for 6 April 2026; 2025/26 tax return showed qualifying income over £30,000 for 6 April 2027; and 2026/27 tax return showed qualifying income over £20,000 for 6 April 2028.

The £50k, £30k and £20k thresholds explained

Test gross, per individual, across self-employment and property combined. A landlord with £28,000 rental income and £24,000 freelance income has £52,000 qualifying income and is in from April 2026, even though neither source alone crosses £30,000.

Joint property is a common confusion. Each landlord tests their own share. A husband-and-wife let with £60,000 gross rent split 50/50 gives each spouse £30,000, which is below the 2026 threshold and in scope from 2027. Don't aggregate spouse income to test mandation.

The other one we keep correcting: cash basis is now the default for unincorporated trades from 2024/25 onwards under FA 2024 s.36. Your cash-basis clients are not exempt from MTD. Cash basis and MTD are orthogonal.

Quarterly updates and the final declaration

Digital records in compatible software. Quarterly updates of cumulative totals due by the 7th of the second month after quarter end:

• Q1 (6 Apr–5 Jul) by 7 August
• Q2 (6 Jul–5 Oct) by 7 November
• Q3 (6 Oct–5 Jan) by 7 February
• Q4 (6 Jan–5 Apr) by 7 May

A calendar-quarter election lets clients align to month-end quarters if their books work that way. Use it where it reduces friction.

The Final Declaration by 31 January following the tax year replaces SA100. Payment dates don't change: 31 January and 31 July as before. Late-payment penalties apply from day one. Late-submission penalty points for quarterly updates are paused for 2026/27 only as a soft landing.

GOV.UK says the standard update periods run from 6 April to 5 July, 5 October, 5 January, and 5 April, with deadlines on 7 August, 7 November, 7 February, and 7 May. HMRC will not apply penalty points for late quarterly updates during the 2026 to 2027 tax year; late tax-return penalty points still apply.

Picking compatible software for your book

Two practical choices: an end-to-end MTD platform per client, or a central bookkeeping tool plus bridging software for the quarterly submission. Both are HMRC-recognised routes.

Spreadsheets aren't dead. Bridging software is permitted and will remain so. For a landlord with three properties and a Google Sheet that works, forcing them onto a cloud subscription is a tax on the client and a support burden on you. Pick the lightest compliant route.

Be honest about per-client cost. A quarterly cadence on 80 sole traders is four times the previous touchpoints. If your software stack adds £8/month per client, that's £30,720 of subscription costs across the book. Someone pays for that.

Segmenting your client list now

Three buckets, in this order.

1. In from April 2026. Anyone whose 2024/25 SA100 will show qualifying income over £50,000. Pull the list off your tax software now. These are your urgent conversations.
2. In from April 2027. Qualifying income £30,000–£50,000 on 2025/26. Identify them this autumn; you'll see the numbers as you prepare returns.
3. Below £20,000 or out of scope. Keep on annual filing. Don't migrate them early 'just in case'.

This is also when you decide which clients to fire. The £24,000 sole trader who pays you £180 a year and emails screenshots of receipts becomes uneconomic at quarterly cadence. Better to have that conversation now than next March.

Pricing and engagement-letter changes

Quarterly cadence isn't 4x the work, but it's not 1x either. The realistic uplift on a simple self-employment client is 1.5x to 2x annual effort, mostly in nudging clients to keep records current. Price accordingly.

Update engagement letters now to reflect:

• Who's responsible for keeping the digital records (almost always the client, in writing).
• What 'compatible software' you support. Don't agree to support five tools.
• The deadline by which records must reach you for each quarterly update. We use 'by the 20th of the month before the deadline', which gives a 17-day buffer.
• The cost of missed quarter submissions once the soft-landing ends in 2027/28.

A month-by-month readiness plan for Cohort 2

Cohort 1 is now in production. For Cohort 2 — anyone whose 2025/26 SA100 will show qualifying income over £30,000 — the mandation date is 6 April 2027. Working backwards from there:

• Now to August 2026. Segment book, identify Cohort 2, draft pricing.
• September to November 2026. Pick software stack, run an internal pilot on one or two friendly clients using HMRC's testing service.
• December 2026 to January 2027. Engagement letter refresh sent with annual SA renewals.
• February 2027. Onboard Cohort 2 onto chosen software, migrate opening balances.
• March 2027. Final dry run of the quarterly process.
• April 2027. Go live; first quarterly update due 7 August 2027.

For everything else on the 2026 calendar — accounts, CS01, P11D, CT600 — the deadline rules don't change. And if your current process is still a colour-coded sheet, the migration is its own project worth scoping separately from MTD.