Most articles about the 7 August 2026 deadline stop at “here are the dates.” You’ve likely seen that version already, possibly on your own reading list, possibly on this site. What’s missing from almost all of them is the part that determines whether your first submission goes smoothly: the decisions and admin that must happen before 7 August, not on it.
This is that piece. Not another explainer on who qualifies for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (that’s already covered in detail in our guide on MTD for Income Tax for UK sole traders and landlords), but a practical look at the specific choices and groundwork your first quarterly update requires, and what to do if you’re reading this with less than five weeks on the clock.
Why Quarter One Carries More Weight Than Quarters Two, Three and Four
Take a physiotherapist working from a Clapham clinic who also lets out a garden flat in the same building. Her Q1 update, covering 6 April to 5 July 2026, isn’t just a one-off report. Every later quarterly update is cumulative, meaning Q2 doesn’t stand alone; it builds and effectively restates Q1’s figures with the new quarter added on top.
That has a practical consequence nobody spells out clearly enough: a mistake or a shortcut taken to hit the 7 August deadline doesn’t stay contained to Q1. It carries forward into every submission for the rest of the tax year, right through to the Final Declaration on 31 January 2028. Getting the first one right matter more than getting any single later one right, because it sets the baseline for everything else is measured against.
The Decision You Have to Make Before You File, Not After
Before your first quarterly update, you need to choose between HMRC’s standard tax year quarters (6 April to 5 July, and so on) or calendar quarters (1 April to 30 June, and so on). This choice is made in your software, not with HMRC directly, and once you’ve submitted your first update under one system, you cannot switch mid-year.
For anyone also registered for MTD for VAT on calendar quarters, aligning both systems to the same reporting periods means one reconciliation exercise instead of two running on different clocks. It’s a small administrative choice with a full year of consequences, and it needs to be made in the next few weeks, not worked out retrospectively in October when the mismatch becomes obvious.
What Actually Has to Be in the Q1 Figures
A quarterly update is a summary, not a finalised tax calculation. Estimated or provisional figures are acceptable at this stage, provided they’re corrected later, either in a subsequent quarter or at the Final Declaration. That’s a genuinely useful piece of flexibility that gets lost in most coverage of the deadline: if a repair invoice from June hasn’t landed by the time you file, an estimate now with a correction later is compliant. Missing the deadline entirely while you wait for perfect figures is not.
What does need to be accurate is the underlying digital record for the quarter: income received, allowable expenses, and, for landlords, rent and costs kept as a single combined property stream rather than filed separately per property.
If You Use an Accountant, There’s a Deadline Before the Deadline
If someone else is filing on your behalf, they need to be authorised through HMRC’s Agent Services Account before they can submit anything for you. That authorisation process, plus getting your bank’s feeds and records connected to their software, isn’t instant. Leaving this until the final week of July means your accountant is trying to onboard you, reconcile three months of transactions, and file, all inside a handful of working days. Often the same days much of the profession is starting summer leave. If you’re planning to hand this off, the realistic cutoff for getting that process started is several weeks before the deadline itself, not the deadline week.
The Soft Landing Is Real, But It Doesn’t Cover Everything
HMRC has confirmed there’s no penalty point for a late Q1 submission in 2026-27 specifically. What it doesn’t cover: skipping the submission altogether (you still need all four quarterly updates filed before HMRC will accept your Final Declaration), and it doesn’t apply beyond this first year, so the habits formed now carry straight into a system with real penalty points from 2027-28 onward.
A Realistic Catch-Up Plan If You Haven’t Started
If you’re reading this in mid-July with nothing set up yet, here’s the condensed version rather than the idealised six-month runway most guides assume you have:
- This week: confirm your qualifying income against your 2024-25 return and choose your HMRC-compatible software.
- Within days: sign up for MTD for Income Tax and connect your software to your Government Gateway account or authorise your accountant’s Agent Services Account if they’re filing for you.
- Before the last week of July: get bank feeds connected and start digitising the quarter’s transactions, using estimates where a figure genuinely isn’t available yet.
- By 4 or 5 August: Submit, deliberately ahead of deadline day rather than on it, since HMRC’s system can take time to register a submission and errors are easier to fix with a buffer.
Documents Worth Having to Hand
- 2024-25 Self Assessment return, to confirm mandation status
- Bank statements for the quarter
- Invoices issued and received
- Rental and mortgage interest statements, if applicable
- Receipts for allowable expenses
- Notes on any figures still outstanding, so you know what needs correcting in Q2
What This Tends to Cost
Software alone typically runs from roughly £5 a month for basic bridging tools up to £35 a month for full packages with live bank feeds. Where it varies more is accountant-managed filing, priced per quarter or as a package, and generally higher where multiple income sources or several properties add reconciliation to work. Some firms, including ours, include compliant software as part of the service rather than charging separately for the platform.
Get Your Q1 Filing Sorted Before 7 August
If any part of the timeline above feels tight, that’s worth flagging now rather than in the last week of July. BS Associate handles quarterly update filing for London sole traders and landlords, including agent authorisation, software setup, and reconciliation, so the 7 August deadline is something that happens on schedule rather than something you’re racing.
For the full breakdown of who’s affected by Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, see our quarterly deadline guide, or browse the rest of ours Making Tax Digital coverage.
Call 0207 183 5956 or visit www.bsassociate.co.uk to get your first quarterly update filed properly, and early.
FAQs
Yes. Quarterly updates are summaries, not final tax calculations, so provisional figures are acceptable provided they’re corrected in a later quarter or at the Final Declaration.
Yes. A nil update is still required for submission. Skipping it because there’s nothing to report doesn’t remove the filing obligation.
No. That choice is locked in once you’ve submitted your first quarterly update. It needs to be decided before your Q1 filing, not after.
Ask whether they hold an HMRC Agent Services Account and are set up to submit MTD updates on your behalf. Not every practice has completed this setup yet.
It can. Because each update is cumulative, an error carried into Q1 needs correcting in a later quarter or the Final Declaration rather than being left as is.
No. Filing a few days ahead of 7 August gives you a buffer if HMRC’s system is slow to register the submission or if you spot an error before the deadline passes.
File as soon as you can. The 2026-27 soft landing removes the penalty point for a late first submission, but the update still needs filing before your Final Declaration can be accepted.
