The treasury has announced a delay to the rollout of MTD for sole traders, partnerships and landlords. 

Before last week’s announcement, any sole trader or landlord with a total gross income of over £10,000 would have needed to keep their financial records digitally and send a quarterly summary of their business income and expenses to HMRC using MTD-compatible software. 

Thankfully, HMRC realised that their software development was so delayed that the original plans for MTD for sole traders, partnerships and landlords were just not possible to carry on with.

As ever the devil is in the detail.

WHAT HAS CHANGED

• The Go Live date has been delayed by 2 years. I.e. it takes effect from April 2026.

• The threshold to fall into the scheme has been raised to individuals with more than £50,000 of gross income who are a sole trader or landlord. Individuals with between £30,000 and £50,000 of gross income will be added into the scheme from April 2027. 

• Partnerships are now not part of the current rollout of MTD, but HMRC is committed to bringing them into the scheme in the future.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DO NOW?

Keeping your records securely and digitally as mandated by the original vision for MTD is still a good thing to do. Whether or not you are legally required to do this. Therefore, if you haven’t already done so, we would recommend that you:

• Have separate bank accounts for your business, property and personal expenditure

• Use a cloud-based accounting system to keep track of your business and property related expenses.