Your first Making Tax Digital for Income Tax quarterly update: what you need before you submit

If you're due to complete your first quarterly update for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax (MTD IT), it's perfectly normal to have questions. In this article, we explain what to gather together to make the process simple.

With Making Tax Digital for Income Tax's first submission deadline on 7 August 2026, many self-employed individuals and those with property rental income are wondering exactly what HMRC expects them to submit.

Before you begin, make sure you've:

  1. Signed up with HMRC for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax.  
  2. Chosen HMRC-recognised software to submit your quarterly updates. TaxNav offers a 30-day free trial, so you can complete your first update before deciding whether to subscribe.
  3. Got your National Insurance number handy, as you'll need it when activating your software.

It’s simpler than you think

The good news is that quarterly updates are much simpler than many people imagine. You don't need to send HMRC copies of invoices or receipts, and you don't need to calculate your tax bill each quarter.

HMRC simply wants year-to-date totals for your income and expenses from your MTD-IT qualifying income. That’s any income from self-employment, property rental or a mix of the two.

What you need to do before you submit

1. Check your reporting period

Quarterly updates cover the period from the start of your reporting period up to the end of the quarter. For most people submitting their first update, that's 6 April to 5 July 2026. If you've chosen calendar quarterly reporting, your reporting period will be 1 April to 30 June. Not sure which? Check out our guide.

If you have both self-employment income and property rental income, you'll need to submit a separate quarterly update for each income source. TaxNav lets you do multiple income sources from one account, and at no extra cost.

2. Gather your income and expense totals

For your quarterly update, you'll need year-to-date totals for your MTD IT qualifying income and expenses. You don't need to submit details of every transaction or copies of invoices and receipts – only the totals.

One area that often causes confusion is expenses. Depending on your circumstances, you may report consolidated expenses or you may need to use categorised expenses. Not sure which applies to you? Read our guide. TaxNav supports both, making it easy to prepare your quarterly update.

3. Decide how you'll provide your figures

Preparing for your update shouldn’t change the way you like to work. With TaxNav, you can continue using spreadsheets to record your income and expenses before importing their figures into HMRC-recognised software. We also enable people to enter their information directly into our software.

The important thing is to choose the approach that works best for you while meeting MTD IT requirements.

4. Check your figures

Whether you keep your records in spreadsheets, in other software or manually, take a few moments to check that your income and expense totals are complete and cover the correct reporting period before you submit.

For this first update, you don’t need everything to be perfect. If you spot a mistake later, don't panic. In most cases, you can correct it in a later quarterly update or your final declaration.

Keeping your first quarterly update simple

Once you've gathered your figures and know your reporting period, you're ready to submit your first quarterly update through your HMRC-recognised software.

TaxNav has been designed to keep Making Tax Digital for Income Tax simple. Our friendly AI assistant, Navi, guides you through each step to help you complete your quarterly update with ease.  

Over on our YouTube channel we also have various how-to videos to help you through it. Having participated in HMRC’s pilot last year, we’ve successfully handled over 600 submissions.

If you haven't yet chosen your MTD IT software, don’t forget TaxNav offers a 30-day free trial. This gives you the opportunity to complete your first quarterly update before deciding whether to subscribe.

‍

‍