Accountants are still working through practical questions around Making Tax Digital for Income Tax as the first quarterly filing deadline approaches, with concerns focused on tax calculations, client approvals, mortgage paperwork, workflow pressure, and the five-week filing window.
The first quarterly update deadline for taxpayers in the initial MTD for Income Tax cohort is 7 August 2026. HMRC’s timeline says those with qualifying income above £50,000 must keep digital records from 6 April 2026 and submit their first quarterly update by that August date.
AccountingWEB’s latest MTD Accountability Club discussion, run with Sage, brought together tax and software specialists to answer questions still troubling accountants as policy moves into live operations. The discussion included Tom Herbert, technology editor at AccountingWEB; Chris Downing, director for accountants and bookkeepers at Sage; Emma Rawson, director of public policy at the Association of Taxation Technicians; and Robyn Milstead, head of tax at LKA Chartered Accountants.
The remaining issues are not about whether MTD will arrive, but how accountants, clients, and software systems will handle the practical reality of repeated quarterly submissions.
One area of concern is the tax calculation. Rawson said: “When you complete the year-end return, you’ll get a tax calculation generated by HMRC. The year-end return does the same job as the self assessment return and has the same deadline, but it will look different.”
Downing said the important change was that software providers would no longer be responsible for the tax calculation. “Under MTD, HMRC is doing the calculation. Accountants are used to reviewing the calculation, checking allowances, looking at income levels and sense-checking the numbers. The profession will want enough detail to do that properly.”
Mortgage applications and SA302-style evidence are also causing concern. Milstead said those in testing had already seen issues where the current self-assessment process usually allows clients to provide an SA302 or tax calculation alongside an HMRC overview.
For clients in MTD testing, she said that process was not yet working in the same way. Rawson added: “It has been taking time for those workaround letters to come through, so if a client is in that situation, do not leave it until the last minute.”
The five-week filing window is another pressure point. Milstead said: “The concern is that this isn’t long enough, either for workflow or for accuracy. I am in favour of the deadline being extended to the start of the next quarter, and I would also like to see a soft landing for everyone’s first year in MTD.”
The panel also addressed whether accountants should bulk-submit quarterly updates to meet the deadline. Downing said agents needed to return to their responsibilities under Professional Conduct in Relation to Taxation, including what they were engaged to do and what level of completeness they were aiming for.
He warned that lowering standards simply to meet the first quarterly deadline could create problems later, because clients may expect the same approach each quarter. Rawson said accountants could not submit figures they knew to be incorrect, including zeros or a quarter of last year’s figures, although agents were not expected to audit client bookkeeping for quarterly updates.
Client approval remains a practical issue. Milstead said PCRT does not require client approval for quarterly updates, but many agents regard it as useful. Rawson said client sign-off is not required for quarterly updates, but remains required for the final submission at the end of the tax return process.
The detail matters because MTD is not simply a compliance deadline. It changes the rhythm of accounting work. Annual tax-return production, client chasing, bookkeeping reviews, software onboarding, and advisory conversations will have to become more frequent and more systematised.
Practice workloads will be affected unevenly. Clients with clean digital records and regular bookkeeping support should be easier to manage. Clients with poor records, low digital confidence, seasonal income, mixed property and self-employment income, or late document habits will create workflow bottlenecks.
Those bottlenecks will arrive in a profession already facing capacity pressure. Accountants are managing Companies House reforms, payroll changes, advisory expectations, recruitment gaps, automation projects, and client demand for more real-time insight. MTD adds a recurring compliance drumbeat that will test engagement letters, fee models, client segmentation, and software processes.
The technology question is more complex than adoption alone. Practices need systems that can collect, categorise, review, and submit data efficiently, but they also need client communication processes that make deadlines visible and consequences understood. Poorly designed processes could create manual work around a policy intended to digitise tax administration.
HMRC’s phased approach gives the market some time, but the first cohort will set expectations for the wider rollout. A difficult first year would increase pressure for soft landings, deadline flexibility, or further guidance. A smoother transition will depend heavily on whether accountants can convert policy detail into repeatable workflows before volume increases.
The next two months will be a practical readiness test. Accountants know the date. The harder question is whether clients, records, software, approvals, and internal capacity are ready to support a new quarterly operating model.
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