MTD: what self-employed practitioners need to do, and when

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax for self-employed therapists and practitioners: the £50,000, £30,000 and £20,000 thresholds, the dates, and what you need to do.

MyWellOps teamPublished 28 September 2026 · 6 min read

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD) changes how self-employed people report their income to HMRC. Instead of one tax return a year built from a shoebox of receipts, you keep digital records and send HMRC a short update every quarter. You still file a return at the end of the year.

It began on 6 April 2026 for people with the highest income, and the threshold drops each year after that. If you’re a self-employed therapist, counsellor or health practitioner, here’s how to work out whether it applies to you, and when.

Who it applies to

MTD for Income Tax applies to sole traders and landlords registered for Self Assessment whose qualifying income is over a threshold. If you work through a limited company, or you’re only employed, this isn’t about you.

What “qualifying income” means

This is the part people most often get wrong. HMRC defines qualifying income as your total income from self-employment and property, before expenses. In other words, it’s your turnover, not your profit.

If you have more than one self-employment (say, a private practice and some freelance supervision work), you add them together.
Rental income counts. If you own a property jointly, only your share counts.
Employment income through PAYE doesn’t count, and nor do dividends, the State Pension or private pensions.
Your share of profit from a partnership doesn’t count either.

HMRC’s own example: £27,000 of self-employment income plus £25,000 of rental income gives qualifying income of £52,000.

So a practitioner who takes £55,000 in fees but has £20,000 of room hire, supervision and other costs has qualifying income of £55,000, not £35,000.

The thresholds and dates

HMRC checks the Self Assessment return you filed for an earlier tax year to decide when you need to start. The dates, as HMRC states them:

If your qualifying income is over…	…in the tax year	You use MTD from
£50,000	2024 to 2025	6 April 2026
£30,000	2025 to 2026	6 April 2027
£20,000	2026 to 2027	6 April 2028

Each tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April.

What this means in practice:

Already over £50,000 in 2024 to 2025? You should have started on 6 April 2026, and your first quarterly update was due on 7 August 2026.
Over £30,000 in 2025 to 2026? You’ll start on 6 April 2027. The return for that year, due by 31 January 2027, is the one HMRC will look at.
Over £20,000 in 2026 to 2027, the tax year you’re in now? You’ll start on 6 April 2028.

HMRC says it will write to you to confirm that you need to start using MTD by the start of the following tax year. Don’t rely on the letter alone, though. Work it out from your own figures so you have time to prepare.

What you have to do

1. Keep digital records

For every item of business income and expense, you record:

the amount
the date it was received or spent
the category it belongs to

You can keep these in compatible software, or in a spreadsheet that connects to “bridging” software. You need to create the records for each quarter before you send that quarter’s update, though HMRC recommends recording transactions as close to the date as you can. You still need to keep the original documents, such as bank statements and invoices.

2. Send quarterly updates

Each quarterly update contains totals for each income and expense category. You don’t send individual invoices. The updates are cumulative: each one covers the tax year so far, so if you spot a mistake you correct it in your records and it comes through in the next update without resending earlier ones.

The standard periods and deadlines:

Period	Deadline
6 April to 5 July	7 August
6 April to 5 October	7 November
6 April to 5 January	7 February
6 April to 5 April	7 May (the following tax year)

You can choose calendar periods instead (1 April to 30 June, and so on), which have the same deadlines. They can be easier if your bookkeeping runs by calendar month.

If you started this April, your next deadline is 7 November 2026, for the period 6 April to 5 October.

3. File your tax return

Quarterly updates don’t replace your tax return. You still submit it through your software by 31 January after the end of the tax year.

Penalties

HMRC says it will not apply penalty points for late quarterly updates during the 2026 to 2027 tax year. After that, each late quarterly update earns a penalty point, and when you reach 4 points you get a £200 penalty.

The first year is a grace period for getting the routine right, not a reason to put it off.

Software

You’ll need software that works with MTD. HMRC keeps a list of software that has been through its recognition process, and says it doesn’t recommend any particular product. Some are free for people with simple tax affairs, though they may have limits such as a maximum number of transactions. If you’d rather keep using a spreadsheet, bridging software can connect to it and send your updates.

Exemptions

Some people are exempt. HMRC gives the example of being digitally excluded. To apply for an exemption, you call or write to HMRC using the Self Assessment general enquiries contact details, and explain why, with anything that supports it.

How this fits with running a practice

MTD mostly affects your bookkeeping, not your clinical work. It gets easier when the income side is already tidy:

Record fees as they happen. Every session, package or subscription payment should end up as an income record with a date and amount.
Match payments to invoices. If clients pay by card at booking, your payment records and invoices line up without chasing.
Keep expenses in one place. Room hire, supervision, CPD, insurance, professional body fees, software and the ICO fee are all in your categories.
Close each quarter. A monthly or quarterly bookkeeping session turns the update into a short job rather than a scramble.

In MyWellOps, paid bookings are invoiced when the client books and paid by card through Stripe, which gives you one record per payment to carry into your bookkeeping. Your quarterly updates themselves still go through HMRC-recognised software.

A checklist for this autumn

Find your 2024 to 2025 and 2025 to 2026 Self Assessment returns and add up your self-employment and property turnover for each year.
Compare each total with £50,000 and £30,000, and estimate 2026 to 2027 against £20,000.
If you’re already in scope, make sure your 7 November 2026 update is ready.
If you’ll be in scope from April 2027, choose software this winter and run a quarter or two of records in it before you have to.
Keep your original records for at least five years after the 31 January submission deadline of the relevant tax year.

If you’re not sure whether you’re in scope, check with HMRC or an accountant before your start date, not after.

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