Do I need MTD if I use a letting agent?
If a letting agent looks after your rental, you get a statement showing the rent collected, their fees, and what landed in your account. Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax started in April 2026 and changes what you’re expected to do with those statements - and how often.
Making Tax Digital for landlords who use a letting agent
Having a letting agent doesn’t change whether the rules apply to you. MTD for Income Tax is based on your income as the landlord - not on who collects the rent for you. So if your agent manages the property, you’re still the person expected to keep digital records and send quarterly updates to HMRC. What decides whether it applies yet is how much you earn, and when your band was phased in.
When does it apply to me? The thresholds
It depends on your qualifying income: your combined income from self-employment and property. Note that this is turnover, not profit - it’s measured before you take off expenses, which catches people out. The phase-in runs:
- From April 2026 - qualifying income over £50,000
- From April 2027 - over £30,000
- From April 2028 - over £20,000
The quarterly update deadlines
Once you’re in, you send HMRC four short summaries of your income and expenses a year, through MTD-compatible software. For the standard quarters, the dates are:
| Quarter covered | Update due by |
|---|---|
| 6 April – 5 July | 7 August |
| 6 July – 5 October | 7 November |
| 6 October – 5 January | 7 February |
| 6 January – 5 April | 7 May |
So the first ever quarterly update covered 6 April to 5 July 2026, with a deadline of 7 August 2026. You can choose to use calendar quarters instead (1 April to 30 June, and so on), which keeps the same due dates.
A quarterly update is not a tax return. It’s a summary - you still make a final declaration after the tax year ends, and 31 January hasn’t gone away. What’s changed is that the work is now spread across the year instead of landing in one January pile.
What if I miss one?
HMRC isn’t issuing penalty points for late quarterly updates in the first year. After that it moves to a points-based system: one point per missed deadline, and a £200 charge once you reach four points.
The bit that catches landlords out
HMRC wants digital records of rental income and expenses, sent through compatible software rather than typed straight onto a tax return. And under MTD you’re not meant to keep those records by manually retyping or copy-pasting numbers from one place to another. The figures are supposed to travel digitally.
That’s awkward when your income arrives as a PDF statement from your agent. It isn’t a digital record you can drop into software - it’s a document you’d normally read and retype. Worse, an update wants your income and your expenses as separate figures, with your mortgage interest pulled out from the other costs - and a full category breakdown on top of that if your property turnover tops £90,000. A letting-agent statement usually shows a single net payout with the rent, the management fee, the VAT and the maintenance all folded inside it. Someone has to pull that apart, four times a year now instead of once.
Where this leaves you
You’ve essentially got three jobs: (1) get the numbers off the agent’s statement, (2) into a tidy digital format, split by category, and (3) into your bookkeeping or MTD software to send to HMRC.
A quick, honest note on what RentSorter does - and doesn’t
RentSorter is not accounting software, is not HMRC-recognised, and does not file anything - you’ll still need proper MTD-compatible software (or an accountant) for that. What RentSorter does is the fiddly first step: it reads your letting-agent statement - even a scanned one - and turns it into a clean Excel spreadsheet with every line itemised, split into categories, and the totals checked against the statement’s own. In other words it gets your statements out of PDF-and-retyping land and into a digital file you can hand to your accountant or bring into your software.
Common questions
When is the first Making Tax Digital quarterly update deadline?
7 August 2026. It covers the quarter from 6 April to 5 July 2026, and applies to sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000. The three that follow are due 7 November, 7 February and 7 May.
Do I need to follow Making Tax Digital if I use a letting agent?
Yes, if your income takes you over the threshold. The rules are based on your income as the landlord, not on who collects the rent, so having an agent makes no difference to whether they apply.
Does a quarterly update replace my tax return?
No. A quarterly update is a short summary of income and expenses. You still make a final declaration after the tax year ends, and the 31 January deadline has not gone away.
What if my letting agent only sends a statement once a year?
You will need the figures four times a year rather than once, so you may need to ask your agent for statements more often, or work from the ones they publish to their landlord portal.
Before you rely on any of this for tax
Thresholds, dates and how they apply depend on your own circumstances, and the rules are still bedding in - so check the current HMRC guidance or ask your accountant. This guide explains the landscape; it isn’t tax advice.
Stop retyping your letting-agent statements. RentSorter turns them - even scanned ones - into a clean, checked spreadsheet in seconds.
Try RentSorter free →