Four updates a year, for each business
Every three months, your software adds together your digital records for each business and produces totals for income and expenses. Those totals are the quarterly update. HMRC does not receive your individual records, so no receipt or invoice is sent with it.
You send an update for each self-employment and property business you have, so a sole trader with a trade, a UK property business and a foreign property business can owe more than four submissions a year. Updates are summaries, not tax returns, and you do not need to make any accounting or tax adjustments before sending one.
Each update covers the tax year so far rather than just the last three months, which means a miscategorised expense can be corrected in the next update instead of by amending the last one. You may send an update from the end of the update period up to its deadline, and up to 10 days before the period ends if you expect no further transactions. If you had no income and no expenses in a period, you must still send a quarterly update to tell HMRC, even though there is nothing to report.
When the quarterly updates are due
| Update covers | Deadline |
|---|---|
| 6 April to 5 July | 7 August |
| 6 April to 5 October | 7 November |
| 6 April to 5 January | 7 February |
| 6 April to 5 April | 7 May |
If your bookkeeping runs on calendar quarters instead, running 1 April to 30 June and so on, the deadlines are identical: 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. You cannot change the update periods you are using for a tax year after you have sent a quarterly update, so choose before the first one goes.
The year-end step is not a quarterly update
The last step of the year is separate from the four updates, and it is due by 31 January following the end of the tax year. HMRC now calls this your tax return. Older material calls it the final declaration; HMRC's guidance for software developers was rewritten in August 2026 to drop that term in line with updated terminology guidance, and you may still meet the old name inside your software's own documentation.
You cannot submit that tax return until your quarterly updates are in. The last update is due on 7 May, roughly nine months before the 31 January return deadline.
What happens if you are late
For 2026-27 there are no penalties for missing a quarterly update deadline, and no penalty points for late quarterly updates in that first year. The soft landing covers quarterly updates only. Penalties still apply for a late tax return, and for paying your tax bill after the due date, from the first year.
From 2027-28, each quarterly update or tax return deadline you miss earns one penalty point. At four points you get a £200 penalty, and £200 for each further missed deadline. You can only get one point per deadline, even if you have several businesses sending updates late, and MTD for Income Tax points are separate from your VAT points.
Late payment is handled separately and is not points based. In your first year of the new penalties you have 30 days from the payment due date to pay in full or contact HMRC to set up a payment plan; after 30 days, penalties start. That 30-day period comes once only and then reduces to 15 days.