If your gross self-employment income was over £50,000 on your 2024/25 tax return, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has applied to you since 6 April. The first quarter ended 5 July; the update is due by 7 August 2026.
Article · 13 July 2026
Plenty of associates heard about MTD in the abstract and assumed someone would tell them when it mattered. This is that moment. The first quarterly period — 6 April to 5 July 2026 — has closed, and the update must be with HMRC by 7 August.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax applies from 6 April 2026 to anyone whose qualifying income was more than £50,000 on their 2024/25 tax return. It extends to qualifying income over £30,000 from 6 April 2027, and over £20,000 from 6 April 2028.
The trap is what qualifying income means. It is your total turnover from self-employment and property, before any expenses — not your profit, and not your take-home. An associate whose gross earnings from the practice were £78,000 and whose taxable profit after lab fees, indemnity, GDC fees and motoring came to £46,000 is comfortably inside MTD, even though the number they think of as their income is nowhere near £50,000. Add rental income from a flat and the threshold is passed sooner still, because property turnover counts too.
The quarterly update periods are fixed, and every one of them starts on 6 April:
Notice that the periods are cumulative, not three separate quarters. Each update covers from the start of the tax year to the end of that period. That is the single most useful feature of the regime and the one nobody explains: if you get something wrong in the first quarter, you correct it in the next update rather than resubmitting anything. A misposted lab fee in June is a non-event by November.
An update is a summary of income and expenses by category, sent from MTD-compatible software. It is not a tax return, it is not a calculation, and it does not change when you pay. Take an illustrative associate for the quarter to 5 July 2026:
The update reports income of £26,400 and expenses of £3,230. The £2,300 of superannuation is not in that expenses figure — it is a pension contribution, and relief for it comes through your tax return, not through your trading accounts. Putting superannuation in as a business expense is the most common error we see on dental bookkeeping, it overstates relief, and MTD now repeats that error four times a year instead of once. Equally, the gross figure is £26,400, not the net amount that hit your bank: the practice's deductions are your expenses, not a reduction in your income.
There are no penalties for missing a quarterly update deadline for the 2026/27 tax year. HMRC is not applying points for late quarterly updates in the first year. That is not a licence to ignore it, but it does mean a missed 7 August is a process problem rather than a financial one this year.
From 2027/28 the points system bites: one point per missed submission deadline, and at 4 points a £200 penalty, plus a further £200 for every miss after that. Points below the threshold drop off automatically 24 months after the missed deadline. Once you are at the threshold, automatic removal stops — you have to file on time for 12 months and clear any outstanding submissions from the previous 24 months.
Your tax return and your payments are a separate matter, and those penalties apply now. The balancing payment and payments on account are unchanged: 31 January and 31 July. Miss a payment and you face 3% of the tax outstanding at day 15, another 3% of what is outstanding at day 30, and then a further 10% a year accruing daily from day 31 — on top of late payment interest, currently 7.75%, set at the Bank of England base rate plus 4 percentage points since 9 January 2026.
Do the fastest honest version. Pull the three practice pay statements for April, May and June, add up the gross earnings and the practice deductions, add your own expenses from the bank, and file. The cumulative design means a rough-but-reasonable first update gets tidied in November without penalty or resubmission. What you should not do is leave the quarter unfiled while you build a perfect system.
Then fix the system properly, once, so the remaining three updates are a fifteen-minute job:
We onboard associates onto MTD as a fixed piece of work — software setup, mapping the practice pay statement correctly, superannuation handled properly — and file every update from there. The full mechanics are in our MTD guide for dentists, the expense categories are in our associate expenses guide, and the wider picture of how self-employed dental tax fits together is in the associate tax guide.
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Probably yes, and this is the most common misunderstanding about the threshold. Qualifying income is your total turnover before expenses, taken from the tax return you filed for 2024/25 — so it is the gross figure on your practice pay statements, not your profit and not what reached your bank account. An associate grossing £78,000 who takes home £46,000 after lab fees, indemnity, GDC fees and motoring is inside MTD from 6 April 2026. Property income counts towards the same total, so a rental flat can push you over on its own. If you are not sure, look at the turnover box on your 2024/25 return rather than your profit.
For 2026/27, nothing financial. HMRC is not applying penalty points for late quarterly updates in the first year of the regime, so a missed first deadline is a process failure rather than a fine. From 2027/28 it is different: one point per missed deadline, a £200 penalty once you reach 4 points, and a further £200 for each miss after that. Because the updates are cumulative, the practical fix for a missed quarter is simply to file the next one on time — it covers everything from 6 April anyway. Your tax return and payment deadlines are unaffected and their penalties apply as normal.
No. Quarterly updates are reports, not payments, and nothing about the payment timetable has moved. Your balancing payment for the year and your first payment on account are still due 31 January, and the second payment on account is still due 31 July. What does change is that you will see a running picture of your position four times a year instead of finding out in January, which makes setting money aside considerably easier. Late payment still costs: 3% of the tax outstanding at day 15, a further 3% of what is outstanding at day 30, then 10% a year from day 31, plus interest at 7.75% since 9 January 2026.
No, and getting this wrong is the most frequent error in dental bookkeeping. Superannuation deducted from your pay statements is a pension contribution, not a business expense. Relief comes through your self assessment return, so putting it into the expenses total on a quarterly update overstates your relief and understates your profit — four times a year rather than once. Code it to its own account, outside trading expenses. The same logic applies in reverse to the practice's deductions for lab work and materials: those are genuine business expenses, and your income figure should be the gross earnings before them, not the net amount paid to you.
You need software on HMRC's list of MTD-compatible products for Income Tax, connected to your business bank account. Most of the mainstream bookkeeping packages qualify, and for a single-handed associate the cheapest compliant option is usually fine — the complexity in a dental practice sits in how the pay statement is mapped, not in the software. Yes, your accountant can file the quarterly updates for you once they are authorised as your agent, and for most associates that is the sensible arrangement: you keep the records current, they check and submit. What nobody can do is file from a shoebox, which is why the bookkeeping habit matters more than the product choice.
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