This one has come up on almost every call since the spring, usually after a letter from HMRC or a conversation with another landlord who is now filing every three months and is not happy about it.
The short answer, if your property is in a limited company, is probably simpler than you are expecting.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax does not apply to your company
Quarterly filing under Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is part of Self Assessment. It applies to individuals with income from self-employment or from property held in their own name.
A limited company does not file a Self Assessment return on its rental income. It files annual accounts at Companies House and a corporation tax return with HMRC, and that has not changed. There is no quarterly filing requirement for your company's rental income.
So if everything you own sits inside the company, the April 2026 deadline everyone has been talking about went past without affecting you.
Making Tax Digital for Corporation Tax is a separate project, and it is not in force. There is no date you need to be worrying about for the company today.
When it does still catch you
This is the part worth reading properly, because it catches more landlords than you would think.
You still hold property in your own name. A lot of landlords incorporated part of the portfolio and kept the rest personally, often because the mortgage made moving it awkward. The personally held property is in Self Assessment, so it counts.
You have other income in your own name. Self-employment, a consultancy, a trade on the side. It all goes into the same pot.
You take money out of the company and file a return anyway. Filing a Self Assessment return because of dividends does not put you into Making Tax Digital on its own. The regime is driven by self-employment and property income specifically, not by whether you happen to file a return.
The bit almost everyone gets wrong
The threshold is on qualifying income, and qualifying income is turnover, not profit.
It is the gross rent and gross self-employment income before you take off a single expense, and it is the two added together rather than looked at separately.
So a landlord with £38,000 of rent in their own name and £15,000 from a bit of consultancy has £53,000 of qualifying income, even if the actual profit after mortgage interest, agent fees and repairs is a fraction of that.
The dates, for personally held income:
- From April 2026, qualifying income over £50,000
- From April 2027, qualifying income over £30,000
The threshold is scheduled to come down further after that, so if you are under it today it is worth knowing roughly where you sit rather than assuming it will stay that way.
What about VAT? That one is already digital
Worth separating out, because people muddle the two.
If your company is VAT registered, it has been inside Making Tax Digital for VAT for years. That means keeping digital records and filing VAT returns through compatible software, and if you are already doing that, nothing changes.
Most residential landlords are not VAT registered, because residential rent is exempt. If you have commercial property, holiday lets or a trading business alongside, it is more likely to apply.
So what software should I use?
Every client here works in Xero or QuickBooks, and that is deliberate rather than a preference about which menus we like.
Both are built for the digital record-keeping these regimes require, both handle a company and personal property income, and both let you photograph a receipt rather than keep it in a drawer until March. If you need to file quarterly for personally held property, you will need software that can do it, and spreadsheets on their own will not.
A few things worth saying plainly:
- Check HMRC's published list. HMRC maintains a list of software that works with Making Tax Digital. If you are choosing something yourself, start there rather than with an advert.
- One system, not two. If the company is on one package and the personal property is on another, you will spend the time you saved reconciling them.
- It is not really about the software. The filing is the easy part. What makes the difference is whether the numbers going into it are current, because quarterly deadlines are unforgiving of bookkeeping that is nine months behind.
If you are not on either package yet, moving across is part of taking you on here rather than a separate project with its own bill.
What to do now
- Work out whether you hold anything personally. If the answer is nothing at all, you can stop worrying about quarterly filing.
- If you do, add up the gross income, not the profit, across property and any self-employment.
- Compare it to the threshold for the year ahead rather than the year behind, because it is coming down.
- Get the bookkeeping current either way. It is what makes the deadlines a non-event.
Rules and thresholds in this area have moved several times and may move again, and how any of it applies depends on your own position. If you want twenty minutes going through what you actually hold and where it leaves you, that is what the call is for.