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Is your practice ready for Making Tax Digital?
From April 2026, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax changes how sole traders and landlords manage their tax obligations. Make sure you and your clients are ready now.
The Sage MTD Agent is free for Sage Accountants. It automates compliance tasks and reduces admin work by 50%, so you can spend more time on your clients and advisory work.
Find the right accounting and bookkeeping plan for you and your clients with Sage Accounting, and get Making Tax Digital ready. To select your accounting plan, just sign up to Sage for Accountants. It's easy to customise and add features.
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Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is a new way of reporting income and expenses which will replace the Self Assessment returns for sole traders and landlords.
Taxpayers or their agents will need to:
MTD already applies to VAT-registered sole traders and small businesses.
The next MTD deadlines are for Income Tax and will apply in phases to all self-employed individuals and landlords with qualifying income above the below thresholds. Accountants with clients who meet these criteria will need to support them in compliance.
Clients will need to get started now to ensure their digital records are in place for the 2024/2025 income tax year currently underway. As an accountant or practice, you will also need to start preparing today. This ensures that when they come to submit the required quarterly updates from 2026 onwards, and year-end Self Assessment, you and your clients have everything you need. Skip the rush and get your clients MTD ready today.
HMRC have launched a ‘private beta’ for tax year 2024/25 and are currently encouraging agents to sign up, however it is also possible for taxpayers to sign up directly.
To be eligible for private beta, you (or your client) must:
Read more information on those that cannot sign up voluntarily, and things to consider.
First you’ll need to identify which clients are impacted by Making Tax Digital for Income Tax and discuss these changes with every client.
If you think a client qualifies for MTD in the 2024/25 financial year, make sure to step them through the process and explain the implications of using a compliant, MTD-ready accounting software.
Once you’ve talked them through they will need to sign up to Sage Accounting through your practice. You can benefit from rewards as you unlock points for getting clients to sign up.
All agents need an Agent Services Account (ASA) to be able to access MTD services and make submissions on behalf of their clients. Think of this as similar to the Government Gateway login.
You will only need one ASA for your firm. Once you have one you can set up your staff with administrator or assistant logins to use the account.
Your firm may already have signed up for an ASA when you registered to submit MTD for VAT returns or Trust Registration Service returns.
The next step is to ensure you have compatible accounting software to be able to submit quarterly updates on behalf of your clients.
Sage Accounting MTD is currently one of the few products on the HMRC list of approved providers that is ready to use right now if you wish to sign up clients for beta testing.
https://www.sage.com/en-gb/making-tax-digital/mtd-vat-software/
Once you have MTD compatible software you can sign up eligible clients for MTD for Income Tax. Here is the information you’ll need for the sign-up process:
Once completed you’ll need to provide the client’s authorisation.
You can do this either by signing in to the Agent Services Account and following the steps, or you can copy over the client’s existing authorisation for self assessment from your HMRC online services for agents account to the ASA.
The Sage MTD is built into Sage Accounting. No complex downloads or sign-ups, and no extra charges to pay, so you can handle everything from bookkeeping to MTD using a single solution with complete peace of mind.
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Sole traders
Landlords
