From April 2026 you will may to send quarterly updates depending on the level of rental income you receive. This fills some with dread. For some it is the quarterly part that they don’t like. For others it’s the idea that you will need software to do it.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (or MTD for ITSA to give it the HMRC snappy acronym) is new but MTD for VAT has been around a while. VAT registered businesses had to start using software some years ago and for most it was no bother.
The new software gives far more information to help run their businesses, better management data, simpler and quicker record keeping and many other things including linking to other software packages that make running a business far easier (like stock management, time sheet recording, holiday and expenses etc).
Those that really didn’t want to do this have always been able to use bridging software however. What is that? Well loosely it is an add in that adapts to, say, a spreadsheet and allows to keep you records away from cloud based software. I will be happy to help people go down this road but for me it feels a little like a missed opportunity. You still have to do the quarterly updates but without any other the benefits of the software packages out there!