MTD for Income Tax starts Monday -- are you prepared?
MTD for Income Tax goes live Monday (6 April). If you're a UK sole trader earning £50k+, you're affected.
The short version: you'll need MTD-compatible accounting software and quarterly digital submissions to HMRC from this week onwards. Annual self-assessment still exists but you also do quarterly updates now.
Most people are nowhere near ready. Common gaps:
- Still on spreadsheets (not MTD-compliant)
- Haven't migrated existing records to digital
- Don't have bank feeds connected
- Don't know what the quarterly deadlines are (5 Aug, 5 Nov, 5 Feb, 5 Apr)
FreeAgent is free if you have a NatWest, Starling, or Mettle business account, that's the quickest free path if you're scrambling.
I put together a comparison of 8 MTD platforms and a 30-day setup checklist at landolio.com if useful.
MTD is the kind of thing that catches solo founders off guard precisely because it requires ongoing ops discipline, not a one-time setup.
The underlying issue: most freelancers track revenue per invoice but don't have a clear picture of revenue per client per quarter at a glance. When HMRC quarterly submissions arrive, you're manually piecing together data that should already be organized.
The fix isn't just the right software - it's having client and revenue records linked so compliance becomes a query, not a reconstruction exercise.