Making Tax Digital for Income Tax became mandatory on 6 April 2026 for anyone earning over £50,000 from self-employment or property. The first quarterly submission deadline came and went on 7 August 2026. Every accountancy practice in the country has spent months fielding client questions about it. Most of their websites still don't mention it at all.
Worth saying up front: this is a working summary for website copy, not tax advice. The specifics for any individual client belong in your engagement letters and HMRC's own guidance, not on a marketing page.
MTD for Income Tax, the dates that matter
Anyone with more than £50,000 in gross income from self-employment and/or property became mandatory from 6 April 2026: digital records, software instead of a spreadsheet, and quarterly summaries instead of one annual return. The first of those quarterly updates was due on 7 August 2026. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027, pulling in a much wider group of sole traders and landlords who've never had to think about any of this before.
None of that replaces the existing self-assessment deadline for the transitional year. The 2025-26 tax year, the last year before most newly mandated clients' first full MTD cycle, still has its final filing due on 31 January 2027 under the system everyone already knows. So right now, practices are running both systems side by side for different clients, which is exactly the kind of thing a worried new enquiry wants explained in plain English before they pick up the phone.
The practices picking up disgruntled MTD switchers right now are the ones whose site actually explains what's happening, in plain English.Why this belongs on the website, not just the engagement letter
A live search, and a site that's gone quiet
New enquiries are searching for this right now
"Do I need to do MTD" and "accountant for Making Tax Digital" are live searches this year. A site with no mention of it looks like it's standing still on the one thing every prospect is currently worried about.
Existing clients check the site before they call
Same instinct behind every FAQ built around real anxiety: a client confused about quarterly filing checks your website first. If it says nothing, the call takes longer, or they don't call and go looking for someone whose site already explains it.
The £30,000 threshold is the next wave
April 2027 pulls in a much larger group of sole traders and landlords. The practices building MTD content and authority into their site now are the ones positioned to pick up that next tier of client.
It's genuinely current, not evergreen filler
Dated, specific, honest content like this is exactly what earns trust with an analytical, numbers-literate audience. Vague reassurance doesn't. A real date and a real threshold does.
A page, not a paragraph
A dedicated MTD page
Not a blog aside, a proper page: who's affected, when, and what your practice actually does to handle it for clients, quarterly submissions, software set-up, the lot.
A plain-English "am I affected" breakdown
Even a simple threshold checklist answers the first question before the call, the same instinct behind a salary-vs-dividends calculator.
The software you support, named specifically
Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent, Dext. MTD compliance runs through software, and naming what you support signals competence before anyone asks.
An honest capacity note, if you need one
If new MTD clients have to wait, say so on the page. A clear "not until after X" beats an enquiry that goes nowhere and a phone call that wastes both your time.
This isn't a new instinct for Zenlio builds. It's the same one behind the FAQ built around real anxiety on every accountant site we build, and behind DF Accounting's two working calculators, live on the site rather than buried in a PDF. There's a full method for building that kind of FAQ in how to write an FAQ that actually calms a worried client down.
If you haven't looked at what your own site currently costs you versus what it could be doing, that's covered in how much an accountant's website actually costs in 2026.
While you're sorting out what goes on the site, there's also the client side of this: a plain-English letter explaining MTD that you can put on your own letterhead and send as it is. Download the free MTD client letter template → No signup, no watermark, edit it however you like.
The right question isn't whether MTD belongs on your website. It's how long you're prepared to let that search belong to someone else's.
