Signing up for MTD income tax

MTD income tax - sign up guidance

HMRC relaunched testing of MTD income tax in April 2024 and the scope expanded in April 2025. Individual taxpayers with income from self-employment and/or property, and their agents, can now sign-up voluntarily from gov.uk (link for agents, link for taxpayers), in advance of mandation starting from April 2026.

Before signing up, it is important to understand the MTD income tax requirements. In particular, volunteers need to: 

• Choose a suitable software product and speak to the developer to check exactly what MTD income tax functionality is included in their product. Note that some developers require separate licences for each income source in MTD which may add to the cost.
• Choose a product (or products) that will allow the income tax liability to be finalised from software. HMRC will not be providing a submission service for the rest of the tax return to those within MTD income tax.
• Have reliable, regular bookkeeping using accounting software in place. It may be simpler if the bookkeeping is done by the taxpayer or their main agent. However, multiple agent functionality is now available for testing , allowing the involvement of a supporting agent such as a bookkeeper. See further details on gov.uk.
• When signing up to testing you have to sign up all self-employment and property income sources (i.e, it is not possible to sign up just property or self-employment income or one of multiple trades).
• Volunteers need to complete the whole year in MTD income tax including catching up on all quarterly updates. During the testing period there are no penalties or penalty points for late submission of quarterly updates.
• Meet the eligibility criteria and expect that they will continue to do so.

The first step of the sign-up process can be used to check eligibility against an HMRC list of eligible taxpayers. Note that this check will not identify cases where there is furnished holiday letting income or an accounting date other than 31 March to 5 April but such cases should not sign up.

• Have the information needed to sign up: national insurance number, date of birth, start date for each trade and for property income, accounting method (cash or traditional), business name, address, nature of trade. HMRC has simplified the sign up journey and now pre-populates the sign up process with information it holds on trades and property income. You only need to know the precise start date if the trade or property business started less than two years ago.
• Have no plans to change accounting date, accounting method or to carry back losses.
• The sign up process allows volunteers a choice about whether to sign up for the current year (2025/26) or next year (2026/27). The possibility of a bulk sign up process has been considered but HMRC has confirmed that each taxpayer will need to be signed up individually to MTD income tax. 
• Agents must have an agent services account and be authorised to act for the client. This can be done by linking to the existing authority for self assessment in the HMRC online services for agents account. 
• Agents must have the agreement of their client and an appropriate engagement letter.

Further information on MTD income tax:

• MTD income tax
• Agent Services Account
• Making Tax Digital for Income Tax - GOV.UK