Making Tax Digital costs spiral to more than £1bn

But how is MTD going to encourage landlords to invest to upgrade say EPC by 2030; how is MTD going to stop the rotten landlords; how is MTD going to help the tradesman who has enough to do running his business?

I’m so fed up with lies and threats from this government and from HMRC . They have ruined my life and now I’m on extra medication to cope.

Of course PRS landlords are immune from mental health problems, anxiety attacks and stress aren’t they?

Reply to the comment left by Sally Robinson at 12/11/2026 – 10:57

Great words Sally.
MTD has just gave us another bill on top of the EPC, the property database, Licensing, 2+2% Tax etc.

They forgetting that too, we are human too, normal people, tax payers, someone ought to take this up one day, they have proper tortured us, made us ill, gave us 15 hours a day in the office. Me nor my tenants signed up to this.
Yes I’ll house u.
Govt: Oh Mick that tenant u helped out 10 years ago who wants to stop there, we now bringing in 176 new rules & costs that’s gonna’ take your time up & cause u a loss, but u got to keep housing her cause it’s basic human rights to have a house & it’s your job to provide that right.

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 12/11/2026 – 11:34
This post quotes HMRC as saying “However, HMRC continues to insist that Making Tax Digital reduces the administrative burden for landlords and businesses.”

MTD does not reduce the administrative burden for landlords and businesses. It looks as though whoever designed the MTD system had never been self-employed, did not understand cash flow for a small business, and did not have any real understanding of the burden of admin self-employed businesses face, especially in their formative years.

Furthermore, not only does this system not reduce the burden of admin for small businesses it results in many small businesses facing a risk of being taxed on profits they are not earning making any cash-flow problems even worse. Like labour’s proposed landlord database this is an extremely expensive white elephant that brings no benefit to the economy and is instead more likely to encourage small businesses to take cash.

I wouldn’t be surprised if phase 2 will be to get people to pay the tax quarterly

Reply to the comment left by JB at 12/11/2026 – 11:55
I agree, it’s just a way of getting money in quicker to let them spend money more quickly.

Reply to the comment left by Sally Robinson at 12/11/2026 – 12:44
I agree that this is the intention but this won’t be the effect. Besides being a small landlord I’ve run a small business for many years and what we find in small businesses is that when a labour government comes along it penalises people for investing in a business, for running a business or for employing people; this reduces business profitability and growth, the consequences of which are that we PAY LESS TAX and we EMPLOY FEWER PEOPLE so the tax-take goes down and unemployment goes up, pushing up the benefits bill.

The effects of burdening business with over-regulation and unnecessary admin (MTD or a landlord database for example) are at their most acute for the small business: But small businesses are the engine of the economy (employing 90% of employees), just as the small landlord is both the engine of the private rental sector and also the business that provides choice and competition in the sector.

The longer term effects of punishing business for employing people include lots of NEETS, but just as importantly the widespread lost of entry-level jobs means that many people do not get to build skills and resilience and many will find their mental health suffering as a consequence.

MTD is nuts.

MTD is incredibly time consuming. Setting up and learning how to use software takes countless hours. I’ve tried about 6 different ones. All of them are different. Some are unfathomable and have very poor instructions. However, it takes many hours to discover it isn’t fit for purpose.
The one I get on with best has problems. It won’t recognise the share of mortgage each of us pay on 3 way owned properties. Also although we operate on the calendar year basis it has insisted on submitting on the standard year basis. I spent hours with customer support and HMRC to get the first submission on the calendar basis but for the second one it has defaulted to standard, which I now can’t change. HMRC says get the software developer to sort it. The software developer says only HMRC can sort it. Goodness knows how much complication and expense that will cause at the end of the tax year.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 12/11/2026 – 12:57
Rachel from Accounts didn’t understand the Laffer Curve

Reply to the comment left by Jo Westlake at 12/11/2026 – 13:30
On “…the share of mortgages each of us pay….”

Originally MTD was intended to apply to partnerships; it doesn’t anymore. You might just want to check whether you still need to do what you are doing or whether you can remove yourself from the madness the civil service just tried to inflict upon you.

Reply to the comment left by JB at 12/11/2026 – 13:35
I think to be able to survive as a labour chancellor what Rachel Reeves may have understood or been capable of understanding may have been less important than the lies she was prepared to go along with in order to stay in post.

What I see at the moment is a prime minister who is ducking and diving, trying not to answer questions, trying not to be pinned down on important fiscal matters or matters of policy….trying to avoid blatant lies. Every time I hear him say “…we have to have a conversation about re-joining the european union (something that is a very different place to the thing we left ten years ago)…” I think, the conversation we really should be having is about the key question of why Angela Rayner still has a job in government.

Most labour MPs have never run a business. In fact, the current MTD proposals stem from decisions made under the last government but they will have been dreamed up by a group of civil servants: I would be very surprised indeed if those civil servants had ever spent much time working as self-employed small business people, and absolutely astounded if any of them had ever established a small business from scratch.