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MTD for Income Tax starts April 2026. Discover how quarterly submissions will impact landlord accounting and why accounting firms must prepare now.
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After ten years in the making, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment is finally arriving. With the first deadline just months away on April 6th, 2026, accounting firms serving landlord clients face a significant transition that will fundamentally change how they operate.
In our episode 1 of our 5-part MTD Masterclass with John Toon, Chartered Accountant and Technology Advisor at Bother and Struthers, we explored what this change really means for practices and their landlord clients. Here's what you need to know.
Listen on to Episode 1 | How To Get Landlord Clients MTD Ready on Spotify →
The rollout follows a phased approach based on income thresholds:
As John points out, "If you've got two properties, unless they're quite small or in a low-value area, you're probably going to be above the threshold." This captures a substantial portion of the landlord market far earlier than many realize.
Related: Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Landlords: The Complete Guide
Unlike sole traders who may already be VAT registered and familiar with quarterly submissions, landlords face a unique challenge. The shift from annual tax returns to quarterly digital submissions represents a fundamental change in how landlord clients interact with both HMRC and their accountants, which will make complex portfolio structures even more complex to manage, yet awareness in the industry remains low.
The visibility problem runs deeper than just compliance. As John describes it: "Managing portfolios for landlords can be quite challenging. It's often done in spreadsheets, and they don't get great visibility of what's actually happening with their properties. They've kind of got a general overview… but they don't know if they're making money on individual properties or whether there's challenges around managing their tenants."
The result is that it becomes incredibly hard for them to stay on top of their finance, especially if they have larger portfolios, and this is going to be a problem with MTD.
One particular challenge under MTD that John identifies is joint property ownership with varying structures across portfolios.
"Joint owners and complex arrangements like that, that's probably one of the biggest challenges that we've actually heard from accountants is how you handle joint ownership, and particularly if you've got five properties and different ownership structures across those five properties."
This complexity reinforces why proper property-specific accounting software that can handle these kinds of scenarios for MTD (like Landlord Studio) becomes essential rather than optional.
One of the most important insights from our discussion is recognizing MTD for Income Tax as primarily a bookkeeping challenge rather than just a tax compliance issue.
"We look at this with a tax lens because we're talking about personal tax, but actually the reality is it's a bookkeeping problem," John notes. "This is about making sure that you keep your accounting records, however they may look and feel, up to date regularly so that you can do those submissions."
For most tax professionals, John suggests, "what they will wait for is those four quarterly submissions to be completed by their clients. And then they'll step in and do the final tax return, which is, for them, kind of like business as usual."
But, even if a practice opts for a more hands-off approach, success with MTD depends on clients having accurate and up-to-date accounting records throughout the year.
For practices, this means:
The cost implications for clients cannot be ignored. John's research suggests quarterly bookkeeping and submission services will likely start at £250-£350 plus VAT per quarter as a minimum. "Potentially, that could be a lot more. It could potentially be a little bit less depending on the kind of service you offer."
For clients who previously paid £250-£350 annually for a single tax return, this represents a 4-5x increase. “If it's suddenly multiplied up by four or five times, that's a big, big change, right? So there's definitely a pricing and an approach challenge to this."
This pricing reality will drive different client responses:
"Practices need to understand what's that potential impact? If you were to lose, I don't know, 5% of clients because they decide that the pricing of MTD is way too high, what does that have an impact on from a practice point of view? Equally, what does the opportunity of having another maybe 5 or 10% revenue create in terms of doing more work? And do you have enough staff to be able to deliver that service?"
Practices need to model the potential attrition and revenue impact ahead of time or face potential revenue cliffs or service bottlenecks.
Despite the challenges, MTD creates genuine opportunities for proactive advisory services. Currently, many accountants only see client data annually during tax return preparation, often discovering missed tax planning opportunities too late.
John describes the current frustration many accountants experience: "Whenever I was working in direct practice, with small clients in particular, it tended to be a more reactive than proactive service. You'd get this frustration where you get the client records off them and you start preparing the accounts… and then you suddenly realize they've bought a car or they've bought something which maybe with a little bit of advice in advance, they could have got some tax incentives for, and they could have been in a better position from a tax point of view."
With quarterly submissions, practices will have regular visibility into client finances, enabling:
"There is an opportunity with MTD because we're going to see this data more regularly,” and this creates “an opportunity to be more proactive," John explains.
Practices should prepare to offer tiered service levels. John outlines the reality: "You're going to have some clients who want to take additional services from you to do these quarterly returns. Whether that's full bookkeeping preparation and review and submission, a review and submission service, or whether it's literally just giving them some guidance," and you need to be ready to provide these services.
The right mix depends on your practice strategy, resource capacity, and client base composition.
Related: Choosing The RIght MTD Software for Landlords
John's assessment is stark: firms that wait until April 2026 to act will face "a world of pain."
While the first quarterly deadline isn't until July 2026, leaving preparation to the last minute creates enormous risks:
The communication risk is perhaps the most serious: "There's no point in leaving this to the last minute and then your clients ringing you up going, ‘hey, John, I've got a return to complete tomorrow. How do I do it?’ Because you're never going to be able to do that. If you've got 100 tax return clients or 1,000 tax return clients, you're going to be immediately overwhelmed."
Even if your full MTD strategy isn't finalized, John recommends two immediate priorities:
"For me, the thing that firms should be doing, even if they don't really have a really clear plan for next year is like, get your communication strategy sorted. Let's start to educate clients. Let's start to talk to them about what the requirements are going to be, what the potential impact is going to be. And also then figure out what's going to happen."
Don't wait for a perfect plan. Begin educating clients about:
This communication serves double duty by helping you gauge client interest and potential attrition.
"We're talking about this now in October, right? If you're trying to recruit someone and they're on a month's notice or three months' notice, you're going to start getting really close to that kind of April deadline."
Model different scenarios:
Understanding these impacts now allows you to make informed decisions about staffing, pricing, and service offerings.
MTD for Income Tax represents the most significant change to personal tax compliance in decades. For practices serving landlord clients, the next six months are critical for preparation.
The firms that will thrive are those taking action now: communicating with clients, finalizing service offerings, implementing appropriate technology, and preparing their teams for the transition.
The question isn't whether MTD will change your practice—it will. The question is whether you'll shape that change proactively or react to it under pressure.
Ready to prepare your firm and landlord clients for MTD? Landlord Studio is purpose-built for MTD compliance with landlord-specific features your clients will actually use.
Book a demo to see how we can support your practice through this transition.
