Landlords face filing burden under Making Tax Digital

Having worked in IT for 30+ years, there’s a familiar old saying “garbage in, garbage out”.
How much “garbage” is going to blast it’s way into HMRC every quarter. As many have stated on this and other forums, self assessment just works. We all know our way around it, it’s online and we know what boxes to fill in.
As Jo correctly points out, the average landlord age is 59 – that means plenty who will be totally stumped by what “app” to use. They may figure out that it’s easier to just chuck in some random numbers for Q1 through to Q3 via a spreadsheet bridge and then sort out the final correct set of numbers in Q4 ….

Reply to the comment left by Grumpy Doug at 12/01/2026 – 13:34
As an accountant/tax adviser I can pretty much guarantee that 80%+ of anything filed by an unrepresented taxpayer will be garbage.

It will now just be garbage quarterly, rather than garbage annually.

The annoying thing is that there are hardly any HMRC staff to deal with the millions of additional returns they will be getting, so they will just go into a system, never to be seen again. And I can bet there will be hardly any additional ‘customer service’ resources.

Reply to the comment left by Grumpy Doug at 12/01/2026 – 13:34
Good point, and what I cannot understand is why can we not just fill in a quarterly version of a tax return, at least we all know exactly what figures go where and can split out properties that are owned 50/50 and those sole owned easily.
Is there a simple answer to this bleedin obvious point. After, all the system exists and it works.
Short of a sensible answer to this, I can only conclude that this whole thing is done to deliberately p**s off landlords even more, so more quit.
And yes, your point about many being technically unsavvy is a good one – I am one of those too.
And goodness me, why the heck are the NRLA not already ready with a simple bit of kit that works for us landlords?

Reply to the comment left by David Lawrenson at 12/01/2026 – 14:44
David, MTD was a George Osborne brainwave (who else!) and also affects all self employed with revenues over £50k in 2026 as well, so it will be utter carnage!
As Ryan correctly states, they cannot cope with the existing volumes, so what they’re going to do with a fourfold increase boggles the mind.
I’m planning on continuing to use my existing spreadsheets that contain all the relevant self assessment boxes and will be using bridging. Q1 to Q3 will be reasonably accurate and I intend spending no more than 15 mins each time loading this up. I’ll just spend the time in Q4 making sure all is correct and proper in much the same way as I’ve done for the last 40 years of my life.

When I started as a landlord 14 years ago I used an accountant. Unfortunately he knew he’d had enough and retired before MTD (which had been on the cards for a number of years already at that time) came into effect because he knew it would be a disaster. I’ve since met other accountants who done exactly the same thing.
There is only one reason that initiatives like MTD (remember IR35?) get dumped on us. They don’t trust us. They think we’re all scamming the system and they want to catch us out.
I feel sorry for everyone facing this nonsense. As far as I can tell the only guideline coming from HMRC is the fact I have to comply. Firstly I have to select a piece of 3rd party software (clearly they don’t trust my spreadsheets) that meets my needs. As I don’t have enough information to know what my needs are, like many others I find myself in a catch 22 situation. “Ask an expert ” I hear you cry! – and suck up the extra cost. And when the expert gets it wrong, and the software fails to work properly who gets penalised? Remember Horizon? Error-free software of note used to prove that the guilty are just that and don’t have a leg to stand on.

Reply to the comment left by Ryan Stevens at 12/01/2026 – 13:07
Landlord software all use Open Banking which makes reconciliation incredibly simple and use recognisable terms such as Rental income, tenant deposit, utility bills, repairs, appliance replacement, cleaning, safety certificates, etc. They aren’t great on having credit card feeds though, which is frustrating. It requires a CSV download, knock out the irrelevant columns, convert positive to negative and upload into software. A complete faff.
Some of them recognise recurring transactions and automatically reconcile. I prefer the option to manually click OK with it’s suggested match.
They cope with multiple owners and unequal ownership splits very well. When setting up you just state who owns what and let it get on with it. Figures are produced for each individual owner at the click of a button.
Landlord Vision even has the ability to send invoices to tenants. It had never occurred to me to do so previously, but it certainly cuts down on late payments. It’s the main reason I’m still using both LV and Hammock. Both are good but neither are absolutely perfect. LV has one glitch which according to them is unique to me. Due to Section 24 two of us made big lump sum payments to reduce our share of the mortgage. The third person didn’t. Therefore the share of mortgage payment doesn’t match the share of ownership or income split. Hammock can cope with that whereas LV can’t.

Landlord Vision and Hammock are both supposed to have a Xero integration facility (whatever that means).

Reply to the comment left by Grumpy Doug at 12/01/2026 – 14:58
I will happily go with that, (your approach) but it seems you need to buy some software to get from one’s noddy spreadsheets to HMRC. And I cannot understand this Open Banking stuff being discussed on here either – how all that fits into it.
I have it v simple… I have rents, expenses, split into the appropriate categories HMRC need and interest on the mortgages. Some of the properties I co own, some I don’t. It is all on one page of one spreadsheet… not split by month currently (or quarter), but I can do it if needed.
It is blimming simple.
Why the heck do I need to buy software to deal with this.
It is ridiculous.
And not surprised that clown G Osborne, (look up his bother) was behind it.

Reply to the comment left by Jo Westlake at 12/01/2026 – 12:08
Jo, your calculations are correct and I’m 59 years old, I work 12 hours a day, plus traveling to and from work and trying to manage multiple houses. I can barely sort out my taxes once a year and pay twice. The MTD is one of the worst things the government have brought in for me, or possibly 1 of their best to get me to quit and make a lot of people homeless. I don’t have any mortgages.

I’m currently an overseas landlord and in the current environment I’m now moving all of my money overseas.

I had a lucky escape a few months ago where I nearly bought another house for a family member, but the sale fell through.

I will never buy anymore houses in the UK. I prefer to invest the money overseas.

This is what worries a lot of landlords I speak to. It’s not even the tax itself, it’s the admin creep. Quarterly updates plus the usual annual returns feels like duplication, especially for people with fairly simple portfolios.

MTD might make sense if you already use software and keep things tidy, but for anyone used to doing this once a year it’s going to feel clunky. Probably worth getting systems in place early or speaking to an accountant now rather than scrambling once the deadlines start stacking up.

Reply to the comment left by David Lawrenson at 12/01/2026 – 18:04
Open banking simply means that you can connect your app to your bank.

In your case, you could just download your bank as a csv file each quarter, categorise the expenses and then upload to HMRC using free/very cheap bridging software.