Your 2025/26 tax return is the one HMRC reads to decide whether you start Making Tax Digital on 6 April 2027. If your turnover for the year to 5 April 2026 was over £30,000, you're in. The return is due by 31 January 2027, but you can send it any time from now. So the question of when you'll find out is mostly up to you. File it in the next few weeks and you've got five months to get ready. Leave it to the last week of January and you've got about nine weeks.

HMRC says it reviews every return, checks the qualifying income and writes to the people over the threshold. It also says that if no letter turns up, it's still your job to check. So don't wait for the post.

What counts as qualifying income?

Qualifying income is your turnover from self-employment plus any gross rent, added together, before a penny of expenses comes off. It's not profit. Fuel, the van lease, insurance, tools, the phone, none of it reduces the figure. Wages from a PAYE job don't count at all.

The thresholds, by tax year:

  • Over £50,000 in 2024/25: in from 6 April 2026
  • Over £30,000 in 2025/26: in from 6 April 2027
  • Over £20,000 in 2026/27: in from 6 April 2028

Take a self-employed courier. Invoices to the depot for 2025/26 add up to £34,000. After fuel, the van and insurance, the profit is £22,000. The MTD test looks at the £34,000, so he's in from April 2027. The £22,000 only matters for the tax bill.

Once HMRC has told you to start, you don't drop out the next year if your turnover dips. HMRC says you can ask to leave MTD once your qualifying income has been under the threshold for three tax years in a row.

What filing early gets you

Time, mainly. If your return goes in during November, you know your position before Christmas. That leaves the winter to pick software, connect the bank account and get used to photographing receipts, while the business is quiet. The first quarterly update for 2027/28 is due 7 August 2027, so the habit needs to be in place by April.

File on 31 January 2027 and you learn the answer in February, with the first quarter already running from 6 April.

One thing to be clear about. Filing the return early doesn't sign you up to MTD. The 2025/26 return is an ordinary tax return, done the ordinary way. Signing up for MTD is a separate step, and we can do it for you when the time comes.

Filing early doesn't mean paying early

This is the part people worry about, and they needn't. The payment date for 2025/26 stays 31 January 2027 no matter when the return goes in. File in November and you simply know the number two months sooner.

That number is bigger than most people expect, because of payments on account. If your bill is over £1,000 and less than 80% of it was taken off at source, HMRC asks for half of next year's tax in advance on 31 January, and the other half on 31 July.

Back to the courier with £22,000 profit. His 2025/26 bill comes to roughly £2,450 in income tax and Class 4 National Insurance. On 31 January 2027 he pays that plus a first payment on account of about £1,225, so around £3,675 in one go. Finding that out in November gives him ten weeks to put it aside. Finding it out on 30 January gives him a day.

If you know 2026/27 is going to be a worse year, you can ask HMRC to reduce the payments on account, online or on form SA303. Reduce them too far and HMRC charges interest on the shortfall, so do it on real figures.

What to send us

For most of our drivers and subcontractors it's the same list every year: bank statements for 6 April 2025 to 5 April 2026, your sales invoices or the platform statements, CIS statements if you're in construction, and the receipts, photographed on WhatsApp or in the shoebox. We work out the turnover figure, tell you straight away whether you're over £30,000, and get the return filed. Payment still waits for January.

If you'd like it done this month, have a look at our self assessment service and our Making Tax Digital page, or get in touch and Alex or Anca will tell you what to send.

Sources: HMRC, Find out if and when you need to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, Work out your qualifying income, Self Assessment deadlines, Payments on account and If your circumstances change. Correct as at October 2026.