MTD for Income Tax Eligibility Checker

What this checker does

Enter your gross self-employment income and your gross property income for a tax year and the checker adds them together, compares the total with the published threshold and tells you whether Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD for ITSA) is likely to apply, and from which date. It also runs the same income against the other two thresholds, so you can see what the lower limits would mean for you later. The tax year selector chooses the year your income is from, not the year MTD starts.

The three thresholds

The regulations (and gov.uk) set one threshold per tax year of qualifying income. If your qualifying income for 2024/25 was over £50,000 you need to use MTD for Income Tax from 6 April 2026. If your 2025/26 qualifying income is over £30,000 you need to use it from 6 April 2027, and if your 2026/27 qualifying income is over £20,000 you need to use it from 6 April 2028. The test is 'over', so income of exactly £50,000, £30,000 or £20,000 is not caught.

What counts as qualifying income

Qualifying income is the gross amount: the turnover of your self-employment before expenses, plus your gross property income, added together across every business you run. A sole trader with £27,000 of turnover and £25,000 of rent has £52,000 of qualifying income, even if the profit is much lower. Income from employment, dividends, State Pension and private pensions does not count. Your share of partnership profit is also left out for now, because HMRC has said partnerships will join later on a timeline still to be announced. For jointly owned property, your share is used, and if you only ever receive your share after expenses, HMRC assesses that net figure.

The £1,000 trading allowance and property allowance do not reduce qualifying income. The Income Tax (Digital Obligations) Regulations 2026 take each amount as included in your return before any deductions, and gov.uk describes gross income as the amount before any allowances or expenses are taken off. If you are close to a threshold, check HMRC's qualifying income guidance before relying on the result.

How HMRC decides

HMRC uses your Self Assessment return for the previous tax year and writes to you if you are over the threshold. Not receiving a letter does not remove your responsibility, so check your own figures. If you are under a threshold you can still choose to sign up early, provided you are registered for Self Assessment and have submitted a return in the last two years.

Exemptions

Some people can be exempt, for example because of digital exclusion, but the exemption has to be agreed with HMRC. If you tick that box the checker shows 'exempt' for income over the threshold. You still report your income and gains on a Self Assessment return.

A worked example

A landlord with a small consultancy has £27,000 of self-employment turnover and £25,000 of rent in 2024/25. The total of £52,000 is over £50,000, so MTD for Income Tax applies from 6 April 2026. A sole trader with £25,000 of turnover is outside the £50,000 and £30,000 limits, but would be caught by the £20,000 limit if the same income is earned in 2026/27, which starts MTD on 6 April 2028.

What this checker does not cover

It does not annualise part-year income (where a sole trader's period is shorter than 12 months HMRC annualises it, and you annualise property income yourself), it ignores changes to a return after it was filed, and it does not apply the residence rules for people who are not UK resident, where only UK property income and declared self-employment income count. Treat the result as a prompt to check your position with HMRC or an adviser, not as a ruling.