Is the MTD deadline widget free?

Yes, free for any site including commercial ones. The only condition is that you keep the attribution link back to Fableworks HQ, which is part of the widget.

Does the widget track my visitors?

No. It sets no cookies, uses no storage, makes no network requests after the script itself loads, and sends nothing back to us. We cannot see who views it. The deadline dates are baked into the script.

What happens when the deadline passes?

It rolls to the next quarterly update on its own — 7 November 2026, then 7 February 2027, then 7 May 2027. Once the 2026/27 cycle is finished it counts down to the final declaration on 31 January 2028. You never have to touch it.

Will it break my site?

It is wrapped so that any error is swallowed silently, it loads asynchronously so it cannot block your page, and its styles are scoped so they cannot leak into your design. If it fails, nothing happens — your page renders as if it were not there.

What does the 'am I affected by MTD?' checker do with the income someone types?

Nothing leaves the browser. The widget makes no network requests, so the figure a visitor types is compared against the mandation thresholds locally and never reaches us or anyone else. We could not collect it if we wanted to.

What income does the MTD checker use, and what are the thresholds?

Gross qualifying income — turnover from self-employment plus rent from property, before expenses, not profit. Mandation is on income over £50,000 from April 2026, over £30,000 from April 2027 and over £20,000 from April 2028. 'Over' is strict, so exactly £50,000 falls into the April 2027 wave, not April 2026.

Free to use · attribution appreciated

Put free MTD widgets on your own site

If you look after sole traders or landlords, two questions you will keep getting are am I even in this? and when is the next one due? These two one-line embeds answer both on your own page, update themselves forever, and take one line each. No account, no cookies, no tracking, and no calls back to us.

Widget 1 · The deadline countdown

That is the real widget, running right now — it inherits your font and sits on your background, so it will look like part of your site rather than a bolted-on advert.

Paste it wherever you want it to appear. Need more than one on a page, or a different container? Any element with data-fwhq-mtd-deadline works too.

Widget 2 · The "am I affected?" checker

The question that comes before the deadline. A visitor types their gross income from self-employment and property, and it tells them whether they are mandated into MTD for Income Tax and from which April — £50,000 from 2026, £30,000 from 2027, £20,000 from 2028. Everything happens in their browser: the figure they type never leaves the page, because there is nowhere for it to go.

Also live. Try £45,000, then £55,000, then £18,000.

Any element with data-fwhq-mtd-checker works as the container too, so you can drop it into a template that will not let you set an id.

What they do, and what they deliberately do not

The countdown shows the days remaining to the next MTD quarterly update, and the period it covers
It rolls forward on its own — 7 Nov 2026, 7 Feb 2027, 7 May 2027, then the 31 Jan 2028 final declaration
The checker works out the mandation wave from gross qualifying income, entirely in the visitor's browser
Both inherit your font and background; scoped styles that cannot leak into your CSS
Both load async and swallow their own errors, so they cannot block or break your page

No cookies, no local storage, no fingerprinting
No network requests once the script has loaded — the dates are baked in
No analytics: we cannot tell how many people see it, or on which sites
No email, no sign-up, no key to register

The catch, stated plainly: the widget carries a small link back to us. That is the entire business model of this page. If that is not acceptable on your site, the deadline calculator is free to use and link to instead.

Where the dates and thresholds come from

MTD for Income Tax quarterly updates are due one month and seven days after each quarter ends, which for the standard periods means 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. The final declaration for 2026/27 is due 31 January 2028. Mandation follows gross qualifying income: over £50,000 from April 2026, over £30,000 from April 2027, over £20,000 from April 2028 — "over" being strict, so £50,000 exactly is the 2027 wave, not 2026. These are the same figures our deadline tool, quarterly update builder and qualifying-income guide run on, checked against GOV.UK, and both widgets share that source data — so they cannot drift from the rest of the site.

If HMRC changes a date, we change it here and every embed updates at once. That is the advantage of a hosted script over a screenshot in a newsletter.

Questions

Is it really free, including on a commercial site?

Yes. Accountancy practices, bookkeepers, letting agents, anyone. Keep the attribution link and we are square.

Does it track my visitors?

No. No cookies, no storage, no requests after the script loads, nothing sent back. We genuinely cannot see who views it — which also means we cannot tell you how many did. We would rather be able to say this honestly than have the numbers.

What happens after the last 2026/27 deadline?

It counts down to the 2026/27 final declaration on 31 January 2028 instead of expiring. A widget that quietly counts to a date in the past is worse than no widget.

Could it break my site?

Every path is wrapped so errors are swallowed, the script is async so it cannot block rendering, and it writes only inside the container you give it. If something goes wrong, your page renders exactly as if the widget were not there.

Can I restyle it?

Yes — the countdown is under .fwhq-mtd and the checker under .fwhq-mtdc, both inheriting your font and colours by default. Override what you like; we would just ask that the link stays visible.

Does the "am I affected?" checker send the income someone types back to you?

No. It makes no network requests at all, so the number never leaves the visitor's browser — it is compared against the £50,000 / £30,000 / £20,000 thresholds locally and then forgotten. On a page where someone is typing their income, that is the only defensible design, and it is also why we cannot show you usage figures for it.

While you are here

If you file for clients, the two pages worth your time are MTD for accountants and bookkeepers — signing clients up, the authorisation trap, and the consolidated sub-£90k relief — and which MTD software actually works with a spreadsheet, where 60 of the 88 products HMRC recognises for agents are bridging software and 11 of those have a free version.

And if you are already tracking client quarters in a spreadsheet you threw together in July, the MTD Practice Tracker is the version of that sheet we built properly — every client's sign-up status, records and filings on one screen, with missed quarters that stay visible instead of rolling away. £39, one-time.