How to Submit MTD Quarterly Updates: A Step-by-Step Guide for Landlords (2026)

Once you are mandated for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, you stop filing one annual property return and start sending HMRC four quarterly updates plus a year-end finalisation. The part landlords actually trip on is not the theory but the mechanics: where the update is filed, what figures it contains, and what you can leave until the end of the year. This guide is the operational walkthrough, so it focuses on the act of submitting a quarterly update rather than re-explaining who is in scope.

The short version: from 6 April 2026, in-scope landlords keep digital records, submit four cumulative quarterly updates inside compatible software, and then file a final declaration that calculates the tax. The quarterly update is a category summary of rental income and expenses, not a tax bill. Reliefs and adjustments are sorted at the year end. If you want the full picture of what MTD is and who it affects, start with our complete guide to Making Tax Digital for property income.

Who has to submit quarterly updates (and who does not)

MTD for Income Tax applies to individuals, including sole-trader landlords, whose gross qualifying property and self-employment income is above the threshold for the relevant phase. Qualifying income is measured gross, before expenses, and both income streams are added together. The mandate is phased by income level, tested against a past Self Assessment return, so a landlord crosses into MTD from the 6 April that follows the year their income breaches the threshold.

Taxpayer type	In MTD for Income Tax?	Note
Sole-trader or individual landlord	Yes, where gross qualifying income exceeds the phase threshold	Phased in by income level (see below)
Joint property owner	Yes, individually	Each owner tests their own share and files their own updates; joint ownership is not a partnership
General partnership or LLP	No	Deferred to a date to be confirmed; continues filing the partnership return
Trustee	No	Outside MTD for Income Tax; the SA900 trust return is unchanged
Limited company landlord	No	Files a Corporation Tax return (CT600)
Non-resident individual landlord	Yes, where the threshold is met	Separate from the agent's NRLQ withholding return

The phasing follows the qualifying-income thresholds: over £50,000 from 6 April 2026, over £30,000 from 6 April 2027, and over £20,000 from 6 April 2028. So a landlord with rents of, say, £36,000 is not mandated in the first wave but is pulled in from April 2027. If you are close to a threshold, our guide on the qualifying income test (gross vs net) explains how the figure is measured. Joint owners each test their own share independently and file separate updates, covered in detail in our note on quarterly filing for jointly-owned property.

If you have just started letting, the obligation is tested against the income on a past return, not the moment the first tenancy begins, so a new landlord is rarely mandated straight away. When your income does cross a threshold, the practical next step is signing up; our step-by-step guide to registering for MTD as a landlord covers that. The rules are UK-wide for the affected taxes, so a landlord in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland follows the same MTD process.

The quarterly cycle: dates and the calendar-quarter election

Under the standard tax-year basis, the four update periods run from 6 April and the deadlines fall just over a month after each quarter ends. You can instead elect to use calendar quarters, which lines the periods up with month-ends and can be simpler if your records already run to the last day of the month.

Standard quarter (period)	Submission deadline
6 April to 5 July	7 August
6 July to 5 October	7 November
6 October to 5 January	7 February
6 January to 5 April	7 May (following tax year)

The calendar-quarter election (regulation 11 of the Income Tax (Digital Obligations) Regulations 2026) lets your periods end on 30 June, 30 September, 31 December and 31 March instead. You make the election by selecting calendar periods in your software before you send the first update of the year, and you cannot switch basis once that first update is filed. The deadlines under the election are unchanged. For the full date table, including how the calendar-quarter dates interact with the year-end, see our dedicated 2026/27 MTD quarterly deadline calendar.

How to submit an MTD quarterly update: step by step

This is the part that has no separate HMRC web form. There is no logging into a government portal to type in figures, the way you might expect from old VAT or Self Assessment screens. The quarterly update is built and sent from inside your software, and the steps below are the sequence every in-scope landlord repeats four times a year.

Step 1: get HMRC-recognised compatible software in place. Sign up for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, then connect software that appears on the gov.uk compatible-software finder. Do not assume a particular brand is approved; the recognised list changes, so check it rather than relying on a name you have heard. A spreadsheet linked to bridging software is acceptable, which keeps a low-cost route open if you do not want a full accounting package. If you are weighing options, our comparison of free vs paid MTD software for landlords is the place to start.

Step 2: keep digital records through the quarter. Record rent received and allowable expenses digitally as money moves, categorised to HMRC's standard income and expense categories. MTD uses the same categories as Self Assessment, so they map broadly to the SA105 property boxes you already know. The discipline that matters is little-and-often: a shoebox of receipts reconciled the night before the deadline is exactly the habit MTD is designed to end.

Step 3: review the cumulative year-to-date figures at quarter end. This is the point most first-time filers get wrong. A quarterly update covers the whole tax year to date, not just the latest three months. The August submission is your April-to-July position; the November one restates April-to-October, and so on. Because it is cumulative, you correct any earlier slip in the next update without resending a previous quarter. Before you submit, sanity-check the running totals for completeness and correct categorisation.

Step 4: submit through the software and keep the confirmation. Authorise the submission inside your software before the deadline. HMRC receives the category totals only, not individual receipts or invoices, so this is a summary, not an upload of your books. Save the confirmation reference. That receipt is your evidence the obligation was met, which matters if a deadline is ever disputed.

What goes in each update, and what waits for the year-end

A quarterly update is a categorised summary of property income and allowable expenses for the tax year so far. What goes in: total rent received and allowable expenses grouped by category, such as finance costs, repairs and maintenance, insurance, letting-agent fees, professional fees and landlord-paid utilities. For the full list of deductible costs, see our complete list of allowable landlord expenses.

What does not go in the quarterly update, and instead waits for the final declaration, is the part that determines the actual tax: the Section 24 finance-cost restriction, capital allowances, capital items such as a disposal or an improvement, and reliefs and allowances. The quarterly update never produces a tax bill on its own. Our deadline-calendar guide breaks the in-versus-out distinction down line by line if you want the full reference.

The year-end final declaration

The year-end is a single step, the final declaration, and this is where older guidance that still talks about a separate end-of-period statement is out of date. The end-of-period statement was removed from the MTD for Income Tax design, and its function is now absorbed into the final declaration. Once the four quarterly updates are in, you file one final declaration that brings together all your income, applies the Section 24 reduction, capital allowances and reliefs, and confirms the figures are correct so your tax can be calculated. Current HMRC guidance frames this as your tax return for MTD: submitting the final declaration is what finalises the year.

The final declaration is due by 31 January following the tax year. For 2026/27, that means a deadline of 31 January 2028. It replaces the old Self Assessment property pages for income inside MTD, but it is the moment the real tax position is settled, so it is no lighter-touch than the return it replaces.

Quarterly updates vs the old annual Self Assessment

The change is one of rhythm. The annual tax-calculation and payment dates survive almost untouched; what is new is the in-year reporting cadence and the requirement to keep records digitally.

Stage	Old Self Assessment (pre-April 2026)	New MTD cycle (from April 2026)
During the year	Keep records, format optional	Keep digital records, categorised in compatible software
In-year reporting	Nothing	Four cumulative quarterly updates
Year-end finalisation	One SA return by 31 January	One final declaration by 31 January
Payments on account	31 January and 31 July	31 January and 31 July, unchanged

For a fuller side-by-side, including how the workload spreads across the year, see our comparison of the current Self Assessment cycle vs the MTD cycle.

Penalties for late quarterly updates, and the first-year soft-landing

The penalty for a late quarterly update is points-based, not an immediate fine. You receive one penalty point for each quarterly update you submit late. A single £200 penalty becomes due only when you reach 4 points in a rolling period, and then a further £200 applies for each later late submission. Points below the threshold are removed automatically 24 months after the missed deadline. If you do hit 4 points, clearing them needs both a clean 12-month run and all earlier outstanding submissions brought up to date.

Penalty points reached	What happens
1 to 3 points	No financial penalty; each point auto-removes after 24 months
4 points	A single £200 penalty becomes due
Each later late submission	A further £200 each time

There is an important first-year concession: HMRC has confirmed there are no penalties for missing a quarterly update deadline in the 2026/27 tax year. You still have to submit any missed updates before you file your return, and late-payment penalties on tax actually owed are unaffected, but you will not pick up penalty points for a late quarterly update in the first year. For the full mechanics, including how late-payment charges work and the worked examples, see our guides on MTD penalties for landlords who miss a deadline and the worked late-submission and late-payment figures.

Non-resident landlords and the quarterly-return trap

Non-resident landlords face a naming clash that causes real confusion. There are two different quarterly returns, and they are not the same obligation. The letting agent's NRLQ is the agent's quarterly return under the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme, reporting tax the agent has withheld from rent. The landlord's MTD quarterly update is the income-and-expense summary described in this guide. A non-resident individual landlord with gross qualifying income over the threshold is in MTD and files quarterly updates like any UK-resident individual, and the agent's NRLQ can run alongside it.

In practice this means a non-resident landlord may have both obligations operating in the same year, handled in different systems. The MTD update needs software that supports non-resident and foreign-property reporting. Our guides on the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme and on foreign-property income under MTD keep the two apart so you do not double-report or miss one.

Getting ready and getting help

Preparation is mostly about systems, not tax. Get compatible software in place, digitise the records you currently keep on paper, decide whether the standard or calendar-quarter basis suits you, and run a dry-run quarter before the live one so the first real submission is not the first time you have seen the screens. Landlords with several properties or mixed UK and overseas portfolios usually feel the change most, because every business has its own update cycle.

A specialist property accountant can manage the full quarterly cycle, from software setup and category mapping to the four updates and the year-end final declaration, so the in-year obligations become a routine review rather than a recurring deadline worry. If you are weighing whether to bring one in, our overview of what a property accountant does sets out the scope. Either way, the route to a calm first MTD year is the same: get the software right, keep records as you go, and treat each quarterly update as a quick cumulative check rather than a once-a-quarter rebuild.