Making Tax Digital for landlords: joint property, multiple properties and Section 24
Most of what is written about Making Tax Digital assumes one person with one trade. Landlords are a different shape: property is often jointly owned, frequently spread across several lets, and still carrying the Section 24 finance-cost restriction that a quarterly summary does not know how to handle. This is what actually changes for a landlord, and — just as usefully — what does not. Every figure here is checked against GOV.UK and dated.
On this page
1. Are you even in it? Rent is measured gross
MTD for Income Tax applies to a landlord whose qualifying income is over the threshold for the year. For property this is your gross rent — the rent before you take off a single expense. Mortgage interest, letting fees, repairs and the £1,000 property allowance all come off after the threshold test, not before it.
That catches out the leveraged landlord more than anyone. A portfolio bringing in £60,000 of rent with £45,000 of mortgage interest and costs makes £15,000 of profit — but it is the £60,000 that decides MTD, so this landlord is in the very first wave.
| Gross property income for… | You must use MTD from |
|---|---|
| 2024–25 was over £50,000 | 6 April 2026 |
| 2025–26 will be over £30,000 | 6 April 2027 |
| 2026–27 will be over £20,000 | 6 April 2028 |
If you also have self-employment, the two are added together for the threshold — gross trade income plus gross rent. And because the wave is decided by a return you have already filed, a landlord's April 2027 start date is fixed by the 2025–26 return that was due in January 2027. There is a full breakdown of which return decides which wave in our deadlines guide.
2. All your properties are one business, not one update each
This is the single biggest relief for a landlord with more than one property, and the thing most people get backwards. You do not file a set of quarterly updates per property. GOV.UK is explicit that you work out the profit or loss for all your lettings "as if it's a single business".
Ten flats and one commercial unit are one UK property business — one set of four quarterly updates a year, with the rents and costs added together, not eleven.
Two boundaries sit around that single business, and they are worth knowing:
- UK and overseas property are separate businesses. Your UK lettings are one property business; any property you let abroad is a second one, reported separately. A landlord with both runs two property books, not one combined one.
- Furnished holiday lettings no longer get their own treatment. The special FHL rules ended on 6 April 2025 for Income Tax, so from 2025–26 a former holiday let is just part of your ordinary property business.
Within that one business, if the turnover for the property source is under £90,000 you may report consolidated totals in each update — one income figure and one expenses figure, with no category breakdown. Since even the first MTD wave only starts at £50,000 of gross rent, a large share of landlords qualify for this simpler reporting.
3. Jointly let property: the easement that halves the work
Property is very often owned jointly — a couple, or a pair of investors. HMRC built a specific easement for this, and it removes most of the in-year effort. For a jointly let property, GOV.UK lets you choose, in each quarterly update, to include either:
- your share of the property income and expenses, or
- your share of the property income only.
If you take the income-only option, you do not have to track and split every expense four times a year. Instead you report the expenses once, after the tax year ends, by resending your fourth quarterly update before you submit your tax return. For a jointly owned buy-to-let, that turns each quarter into a single rent figure.
One catch worth pinning down: the easement is per property. If you also solely own other properties, those still need both income and expenses in every update — you cannot defer the expenses on your own properties, only on the jointly let ones.
There is a related quirk in the threshold test itself. If you are only ever told your share of the joint income after expenses have been deducted — as many joint owners are — HMRC has set out how it works out your qualifying income in that case, so it is worth checking rather than assuming your net share is the number that counts.
4. Section 24 does not go away — it just waits until year end
Since April 2020, an individual landlord paying Income Tax cannot deduct mortgage interest as an expense. GOV.UK states it plainly: a company can claim interest on property loans as an allowable expense, but "you cannot do this if you're an individual landlord who pays Income Tax." Instead your finance costs are given back as a basic-rate tax reduction — the restriction everyone calls Section 24.
This matters for MTD because a quarterly update is a summary of income and expenses, and it does no tax calculation at all. So there is nowhere in a quarterly update for the Section 24 relief to appear. The consequence is the part to hold on to:
Your mortgage interest is not an ordinary running cost in your quarterly figures. The relief for it is worked out separately at the final declaration, the once-a-year step that replaces your Self Assessment return.
Two practical effects follow. First, the tax estimate your software shows after a quarterly update can look too high for a mortgaged landlord, because the basic-rate reduction has not been applied yet — do not panic at an in-year figure. Second, if you have been treating interest as an expense in a spreadsheet, you are keeping the wrong records: interest needs to sit in its own line, ready for the year-end reduction, not buried in costs. Working out what Section 24 is actually costing you is exactly what our landlord calculator is for.
5. What a landlord's MTD year actually looks like
Put together, a mortgaged landlord in the first wave has a year that is lighter in each quarter than the adverts suggest, and back-loaded onto one date:
| When | What a landlord does |
|---|---|
| Each quarter | Send one cumulative update of property income (and expenses, unless the property is jointly let and you deferred them). No tax adjustments, no Section 24, no interest relief. |
| 7 Aug · 7 Nov · 7 Feb · 7 May | The four update deadlines — the same for every landlord and every year. |
| After 5 April | Resend the fourth update to add any deferred joint-property expenses, then finalise. |
| 31 January following | Final declaration: the whole year totalled, Section 24 relief applied, tax calculated and paid. This is the date with the money on it. |
The reporting changed; the reliefs did not. Section 24, the £1,000 property allowance, replacement of domestic items relief and property losses carried forward all still work exactly as before — they just land at the final declaration rather than in a quarter. If you keep interest on its own line and, for joint property, decide up front whether you are deferring expenses, MTD for a landlord is four short summaries and one real return.
Sources. Checked against GOV.UK on 9 August 2026: find out if and when you need to use MTD for Income Tax (thresholds and which return decides them), send quarterly updates (the jointly let easement, per-business updates and consolidated reporting), and tax on rental income (property lettings as a single business, and finance costs not being an allowable expense for individual landlords). This is a guide, not tax advice, and it is not compatible software — it does not send anything to HMRC. Rules change; check your own position with HMRC or your accountant.