Making Tax Digital: The 7 August Deadline, and What to Do This Week
Published 30 July 2026
The first Making Tax Digital (MTD) quarterly deadline falls on 7 August 2026. If it applies to you, you have just over a week to get things ready.
Around 864,000 sole traders and landlords across the UK are in this first wave. If you’re one of them and you haven’t signed up yet, you can still be ready.
Here’s a short guide to help you get started.
Does MTD apply to you?
The answer is yes, if your answers to all three of the questions below are true:
- You’re a sole trader, a landlord, or both.
- Your combined gross income (business turnover and rental income before expenses) from self-employment and property in the 2024 to 2025 tax year was more than £50,000.
- You’ve not been granted an exemption by HMRC.
That middle point is the one that is catching people out. It is gross income, not profit, being looked at. A turnover of £58,000 with profit of £30,000 puts you inside the rules.
The answer is no, if any of these apply:
- You trade through a limited company.
- You are in a partnership, which isn’t in scope…yet.
- Your entire income is taxed via PAYE.
- Your combined self-employment and property income was £50,000 or less.
HMRC has written to people it believes are affected. If you haven’t received a letter, it doesn’t mean you are exempt. The MTD requirement depends on your income, and it’s your responsibility to check if it applies to you.
What is actually due on 7 August
You must submit a quarterly update for the period from 6 April to 5 July 2026 to HMRC using recognised software by 7 August 2026.
This isn’t a tax return. It’s a summary of your income and expenses for the quarter. There is no tax calculation involved, no reliefs to claim, and nothing to pay. Think of it as a progress update rather than a tax return. You’re reporting summary income and expense figures, not calculating your final tax bill.
Your year-end filing deadline remains 31 January following the end of the tax year, although MTD users complete a Final Declaration through the new system rather than the traditional standalone Self Assessment return.
Payment dates remain the same: 31 January and 31 July. You will not need to pay tax four times a year.
What to do now, in order
- Check your situation. Review your 2024 to 2025 tax return and add up your gross self-employment and gross property income. If the total is over £50,000, you’re included.
- If you have an accountant, contact them today. Ask if they have an Agent Services Account and are authorised to file MTD updates for you. Not all practices have set this up yet, so this is important to check. If you don’t have an accountant, you will need to manage MTD yourself, including keeping digital records, linking your software to your tax account, and submitting updates.
- Choose your software. It must be on HMRC’s recognised list, available on GOV.UK. Free options exist for simple and straightforward businesses. You cannot file through your HMRC online account, and you cannot file from a spreadsheet on its own. If you use a spreadsheet, it needs to be linked to HMRC through compatible bridging software.
- Sign up for MTD for Income Tax on GOV.UK and connect the software to your Government Gateway account.
- Get your April to July figures in. Many software packages can pull transactions through automatically using bank feeds. You’ll need to check the transaction categorisations and for anything missing or duplicated.
- If you can, file a few days early. Filing on 4 or 5 August gives you breathing space if something does not go through cleanly first time.
What if I’m not going to make the first MTD deadline?
If you miss the deadline, file as soon as you can afterwards. Don’t let the date passing become a reason to procrastinate, bury your head in the sand, or not do anything.
For the 2026/27 tax year, HMRC has said it will not issue penalty points for late quarterly updates. This grace period is great but isn’t quite a free pass. You still have to file your update, because the quarterly updates form part of your overall MTD reporting journey and are needed before you can fully finalise your year-end position. Equally, late filing and late payment penalties on the annual return apply exactly as they always have.
The sensible way to read the first year is as a rehearsal for doing the updates with the pressure taken off. From April 2027 the points-based penalty system applies in full.
If you’re not affected yet
Eventually, MTD is expected to affect most self-employed people and landlords. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and to £20,000 from April 2028, which brings in a large share of Hartlepool’s smaller sole traders and landlords.
If that’s likely to be you, the single most useful thing you can do now is start keeping digital records while nothing is riding on it. Coming to your MTD start date with a year of clean records behind you removes almost all the difficulty, stress, and worry.
Our upcoming full MTD guide will cover the thresholds, exemptions, deadlines, and the whole process in detail.
Need a hand?
While Invest Hartlepool cannot provide tax advice, we can help you identify whether this change may affect you and connect you with the right support, including qualified advisers where the question is genuinely a tax question. Get in touch with the Economic Growth Team at Hartlepool Enterprise Centre on 01429 867677.
HMRC runs regular free webinars, publishes full guidance on their website alongside the recognised software list on GOV.UK – https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/making-tax-digital-for-income-tax
This is general information about a UK tax change, correct as of July 2026. It is not tax advice, and Hartlepool Borough Council cannot advise on your individual tax position or act on your behalf with HMRC. Check GOV.UK for the current position and speak to a qualified accountant or tax adviser about your own circumstances.
