Your Second MTD for Income Tax Update Is Due 7 November — Here's What Goes In It

Mike Jackson FCCA

Sep 29

3 min read

Updated: Oct 24

If your qualifying self-employment or property income was over £50,000 for 2024/25, you'll already have joined Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD for IT) this April, and sent HMRC your first quarterly update back in August. The second one is due on 7 November 2026, covering the period from 6 July to 5 October.

It's easy for these quarterly deadlines to slip past unnoticed, especially compared to the one big Self Assessment date everyone's used to circling in January. So here's a quick refresher on what's actually required.

What a quarterly update is (and isn't)

A quarterly update is a digital summary of your income and expenses for the period, sent to HMRC through MTD-compatible software. It is not a tax return, and no tax is calculated or paid at this stage. For each update you'll need:

• Income totals — sales, fees, or rents received in the period

• Expense totals, categorised under HMRC's standard headings (for example travel, repairs, utilities, or stock costs)

• The transaction dates falling within the quarter

What it doesn't cover is just as important. Employment income taxed under PAYE, dividends, savings interest, pension income and capital allowances all stay out of the quarterly update — those are dealt with later, in the annual MTD tax return that replaces your old Self Assessment return.

Who this applies to

MTD for Income Tax became mandatory from April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income above £50,000 in the relevant prior tax year. If that's you, this second update is one of four you'll file this year, alongside the annual declaration due by 31 January 2028. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028, so more clients will be brought into scope over the next couple of years even if this deadline doesn't affect you yet.

The penalty picture for 2026/27

HMRC has been clear that the first year of MTD for Income Tax is a soft-landing period. Miss a quarterly update in 2026/27 and no penalty points are issued — but that leniency doesn't extend to the final annual return, and it won't last. From 2027/28 onwards, late quarterly updates start attracting penalty points under HMRC's points-based system, with four points triggering a £200 fine. Getting into the habit of filing on time now saves a scramble to change process later.

A few practical points

A handful of things catch people out with these updates:

• The submission window opens before the deadline. You can typically send this quarter's update from 6 October, so there's no need to wait until the last few days of the window.

• Estimates need tidying up. If you used provisional figures in an earlier update because information wasn't in yet, MTD software should let you amend a previous quarter rather than trying to correct everything in the current one.

• Software compatibility matters. HMRC's free tools don't cover MTD for Income Tax, so you'll need commercial software (or an agent using it on your behalf) that's compatible with HMRC's systems.

• Property and self-employment income are reported separately within the same submission if you have both, so keep records split by source rather than lumped together.

How we can help

For clients already in MTD for Income Tax, we handle quarterly submissions as part of our regular bookkeeping work, so the 7 November deadline shouldn't be a fire drill. If you're a Bury or Greater Manchester sole trader or landlord who's not sure whether you're in scope yet, or you've joined MTD and want a second pair of eyes on your first couple of updates before the annual return looms, get in touch with Jackson Lee Accountants and we'll take a look at where you stand.

Need a hand with this? We're accountants in Bury, and our VAT and Making Tax Digital service covers it for a fixed fee.