If your rental and/or self-employment income exceeded £50,000 in 2024–25, new HMRC rules require you to keep digital records and submit quarterly updates. Here’s what you need to do now.

What Is Making Tax Digital for Income Tax?

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD IT) is a significant change to the way landlords and self-employed individuals report income to HMRC. From April 2026, those with qualifying income above £50,000 will be required to move away from the traditional annual self-assessment tax return and instead:

• Keep digital records of all rental income and expenditure
• Submit quarterly updates to HMRC throughout the year
• File an end-of-year finalisation in place of the current tax return

These changes represent the most significant shift in personal tax reporting in a generation, and early preparation will make the transition considerably smoother.

Landlords with UK and Overseas Property

If you own rental property in Greece, Cyprus or abroad, MTD IT may apply to you from April 2027 — with additional considerations around Greek tax obligations and double taxation treaties. As London’s leading accountants for international property matters, we are well placed to help you navigate both jurisdictions, including reporting foreign-denominated transactions.

Navigating the interaction between UK MTD IT obligations and overseas tax reporting — including overseas tax residency rules, double taxation treaty positions, and foreign rental income declarations — requires specialist knowledge. Our team has extensive experience advising landlords and expatriates across London and the UK on exactly these cross-border complexities.

If your property portfolio includes overseas assets, we strongly encourage you to speak with us early, so we can assess your specific position across both jurisdictions and ensure you are fully prepared well ahead of the deadlines.

How to Submit Your Records: Two Compliant Approaches

To ensure we can support you efficiently and keep you fully compliant, you will need to adopt one of the following methods for providing us with your rental income and expenditure records each quarter.

Option 1 – Online Bookkeeping Software
We strongly encourage clients to use cloud-based bookkeeping software, which allows you to submit records to us on an ongoing basis throughout each quarter. This is the most seamless and compliant approach under MTD IT.

• Upload receipts, rental statements and invoices via mobile app, email or web portal
• Sync bank transactions securely with your online banking
• Distinguish clearly between separate rental businesses
• Store and retrieve records in a fully digital format
• Ensure we receive information on time — every quarter, without chasing

Banking tip
We strongly recommend maintaining a separate, dedicated bank account for each distinct rental business. Where a landlord jointly owns one group of properties with one co-owner, and another group with a different co-owner, each constitutes a separate rental business and should operate through its own account. Keeping business transactions separate avoids delays in analysis and reduces the risk of private transactions being accounted for.

Option 2 – Quarterly Spreadsheet Records
If you prefer not to use online software, you may alternatively maintain your own quarterly spreadsheet of income and expenditure — typically in Excel or equivalent software. If you choose this route, please contact us in advance so we can provide the prescribed spreadsheet format required for MTD-compliant reporting. Using our standardised Quarterly Spreadsheet Records template will reduce errors and avoid unnecessary back-and-forth at each quarter end. You will also need to ensure you are familiar with the digital recordkeeping requirements necessary to substantiate your entries.

Your Next Steps

1. Consider your preferred option — whether you intend to use bookkeeping software or quarterly spreadsheets.
2. Register with HMRC — our onboarding specialist will be in touch to walk you through the HMRC registration process for MTD IT.
3. Set up your software or spreadsheet — we will help you get the right tools in place and provide training where needed.
4. Open dedicated bank accounts — if you have multiple rental businesses, now is the time to set up separate accounts for each.
5. Consider the impact on workflows — MTD IT will change the nature of ongoing work.