MTD Quarterly Deadlines 2026: Landlord Submission Dates

When are the MTD quarterly deadlines for landlords?

MTD quarterly deadlines 2026 follow a straightforward pattern: each deadline falls one calendar month after the end of the relevant quarter. The UK tax year runs from 6 April to 5 April, and the four quarters are aligned to that calendar. Knowing these dates in advance lets you build a simple compliance routine — one quarterly task, four times a year.

It is important to understand that these submission deadlines are separate from the tax payment deadlines you are already familiar with. Submitting a quarterly update does not trigger a tax payment. You report income and expenses; HMRC produces a running estimate of your liability. Your actual tax payments remain due on 31 January (balancing payment and first payment on account) and 31 July (second payment on account) — exactly as under Self Assessment.

HMRC confirmed that the mandatory start date for landlords and self-employed individuals with qualifying income above £50,000 is 6 April 2026. The full MTD for Income Tax timeline is on gov.uk. For a broader introduction to the scheme, read our complete MTD guide for landlords.

Not sure yet whether you need to comply? Use our free tool to check if you need MTD — it takes about three minutes and produces a plain-English result based on your income figures.

The 4 quarterly periods for 2026/27

The table below shows every MTD deadline for the 2026/27 tax year, including the End of Period Statement and Final Declaration. Save these dates to your calendar now — missing any one of them earns a penalty point.

HMRC also allows an alternative quarterly period where submissions follow calendar-month boundaries rather than the 6th-to-5th tax year pattern. Under the alternative arrangement, Quarter 1 runs from 1 April to 30 June and is due by 31 July; Quarter 2 runs from 1 July to 30 September and is due by 31 October; Quarter 3 runs from 1 October to 31 December and is due by 31 January; Quarter 4 runs from 1 January to 31 March and is due by 30 April. If your bank statements or letting agent reports align to calendar months, this option is worth considering. You elect for it in your MTD software at sign-up.

For context on who is affected by these dates and how the thresholds are calculated, see our article on MTD April 2026: who is affected.

What you submit each quarter

A quarterly update is not a full tax return. It is a structured summary of your rental income and allowable property expenses for the three-month period. You do not send invoices, receipts, or bank statements to HMRC — you send totals, mapped to the same categories used on the SA105 property income supplementary page.

The categories you populate in each quarterly update are:

• Total rent received — all rental receipts actually received in the quarter, including any rent paid in advance. Do not include rental income you are owed but have not yet collected.
• Repairs and maintenance — revenue repairs such as fixing a boiler, repainting between tenancies, or replacing a like-for-like appliance. Capital improvements that enhance the property beyond its original condition are not allowable expenses and should not appear here.
• Letting agent and management fees — any fees charged by your agent for finding tenants, managing the property, collecting rent, or arranging maintenance.
• Insurance premiums — landlord buildings insurance, contents insurance for furnished properties, and rent guarantee insurance.
• Finance costs (Section 24) — the interest portion of your residential mortgage payments, recorded separately in the finance costs field. Do not put mortgage interest in the general expenses section. HMRC applies a 20% basic-rate tax credit to this figure rather than allowing it as a direct deduction.
• Other allowable expenses — ground rent you pay as a leaseholder, utility bills where you pay rather than the tenant, advertising costs, and accountancy fees relating to your property business.

Once you have categorised every transaction for the quarter, your MTD software produces a summary screen showing total income, total expenses, and an estimated profit or loss. Review these figures before submitting. Common errors include: mortgage capital repayments included alongside interest (only interest is allowable), personal expenditure accidentally included in the business bank export, and transactions duplicated because they appeared in both a letting agent statement and your bank statement.

When you are satisfied the figures are correct, you click Submit in your software. The update is sent to HMRC's MTD API within seconds, and you receive a confirmation reference. You do not need to do anything else until the next quarter's deadline.

EOPS and Final Declaration deadlines

Two additional submissions come after your four quarterly updates. Both are due by 31 January 2027 for the 2026/27 tax year.

End of Period Statement (EOPS)

The End of Period Statement is your annual review of the property business figures you submitted across the four quarters. It is your opportunity to make adjustments before the figures are finalised — for example, to correct a miscategorised transaction you spotted after a quarterly deadline, to add an expense you forgot in an earlier quarter, or to claim an annual allowance such as the property income allowance (£1,000) if you are eligible.

You submit one EOPS for each income source. If you have UK property income only, you submit one. If you also have overseas property income, you submit a separate EOPS for that. If you are self-employed as well as being a landlord, you submit an EOPS for your self-employed income too.

The EOPS deadline for the 2026/27 tax year is 31 January 2027. You may submit it earlier — as soon as your Quarter 4 update is accepted and you are satisfied your figures are accurate. Submitting the EOPS early gives you more time to review your Final Declaration before that deadline.

Final Declaration

The Final Declaration replaces the SA100 Self Assessment tax return. It is the submission that finalises your total income tax liability for the year. It brings together your property income (from your EOPS submissions), any employment income, dividends, savings interest, and any other income sources. It also allows you to claim personal allowances, reliefs, and deductions that are not part of the property income calculation — for example, Gift Aid donations, pension contributions, or marriage allowance transfers.

The Final Declaration deadline for 2026/27 is also 31 January 2027 — the same date as the familiar Self Assessment deadline you have always filed to. The key difference is that by the time you reach the Final Declaration, most of the hard work is already done through your quarterly updates and EOPS. The Final Declaration simply confirms the full picture and triggers HMRC's calculation of any balancing payment due.

What happens if you miss an MTD deadline?

HMRC operates a points-based penalty system for MTD for Income Tax, introduced under the Finance Act 2021. It replaces the old fixed-fine regime used for Self Assessment and is designed to tolerate occasional lapses while penalising persistent non-compliance. The full penalty rules are published on gov.uk.

How the points-based system works

Each time you miss a quarterly submission deadline, HMRC adds one penalty point to your tax record. Quarterly filers have a penalty threshold of four points. When your total reaches four, HMRC issues a £200 financial penalty. After that, each further late submission attracts an additional £200 penalty straight away — there is no higher threshold to reach.

Penalty points expire after a continuous compliance period of 24 months. If you are at three points and then submit every quarterly update on time for two full years, your points reset to zero. HMRC will also consider a reasonable excuse — such as serious illness, bereavement, or a verified HMRC systems failure — if you appeal a penalty point. Contact HMRC as quickly as possible after a missed deadline if you have a genuine excuse.

Late payment penalties on tax owed

The points system covers late submissions only. If you also pay your tax late, a separate late payment penalty applies: 2% of unpaid tax after 15 days, rising to a further 2% (4% total) after 30 days, then a daily rate equivalent to 4% per annum for amounts unpaid beyond 31 days. HMRC also charges interest on late payments at the Bank of England base rate plus 2.5%. These two penalty streams are independent — you can incur both if you miss a submission deadline and also fail to pay on time.

How to never miss an MTD deadline

The most effective deadline management strategy is to treat your quarterly update as a routine task scheduled well before the deadline — not a scramble at the last moment. The deadlines are fixed and predictable: 5 August, 5 November, 5 February, and 5 May each year. Add them as recurring annual events in your phone calendar now, with a reminder two weeks before each date.

Keep records updated throughout the quarter

The biggest time sink in quarterly MTD compliance is categorising transactions in bulk at the end of the quarter. If you let three months of bank activity accumulate, you will spend an evening or two working through dozens of entries. If instead you upload your bank CSV once a month and review the flagged transactions then and there, each session takes 15 to 20 minutes. By the time the quarterly deadline arrives, your software already has the complete, categorised transaction list ready to submit with a single click.

Use a dedicated rental bank account

Mixing rental income and expenses with your personal current account is the most common cause of MTD categorisation errors. When rent payments, letting agent debits, repair invoices, and insurance premiums all flow through a separate account, your quarterly bank export contains only property business transactions. There is no need to identify and exclude personal spending from the data set, and the number of flagged transactions requiring manual review drops significantly.

Choose software with built-in deadline alerts

Good MTD software shows your upcoming submission dates on the dashboard and sends you email or push notification reminders as each deadline approaches. LandlordTaxAi displays a countdown to the next quarterly deadline and sends a reminder email 30 days and again 7 days before the due date. You do not need to remember the dates independently — the software tracks them for you.

What to do if you know you will miss a deadline

If you face a genuine emergency — a hospital admission, a bereavement, a prolonged system outage — contact HMRC as soon as possible and document the circumstances. HMRC can grant a reasonable excuse exemption that prevents a penalty point being recorded. The exemption is not automatic: you must apply and provide evidence. Do not wait until after HMRC has issued a penalty notice — apply proactively, ideally before or shortly after the missed deadline.

If your exemption is refused and you accumulate penalty points, note that the points system has a built-in recovery path. Two years of full compliance clears your record. A single missed deadline early in the MTD regime does not follow you indefinitely — provided you submit on time from that point forward.

Frequently asked questions about MTD quarterly deadlines