Correspondence

Ready, Steady, File!

Published 7 November 2025

Welcome to the first Making Tax Digital testing newsletter

You’re officially part of something big. With less than 9 months to go until Making Tax Digital (MTD) becomes mandatory for some, your role as a tester is crucial. This is the biggest change to Income Tax in over 30 years and your feedback and experience will help shape it.

This newsletter is your quarterly companion, keeping you updated

This edition of the newsletter includes:

• key updates from the MTD testing journey
• useful tips to make your volunteer experience smoother
• a spotlight on insights from other testers
• opportunities to share your feedback (we really want to hear from you)

Spotlight: user research insights

This quarter, we’re zooming in on what we’ve learned from user research with volunteers who took part in MTD for the 2024 to 2025 tax year. Expect interesting takeaways on what’s working well and what we’re improving, thanks to real feedback like yours. Read the ‘Spotlight session’ section of this newsletter to find out more.

Important date: first quarterly update due (deadline 5‌‌‌ August‌‌‌ 2025)

You can start submitting your first quarterly update from the end of July‌‌‌ ‌‌‌2025. Don’t worry during the testing phase, there are no penalties for late submissions. But submitting on time helps you build good habits and helps us stress test the service properly.

Tell us what you think

How did you find the sign-up journey for MTD? We’d love to know.

We value your input and would be grateful if you could spend 5 minutes filling in this form regarding your experience in signing up to the testing phase of MTD. Your feedback directly helps us to make the service better.

We also have some great user feedback opportunities, and if you would like to get involved with these then let us know on the feedback form.

What we are testing

Throughout 2024 to 2025, we have been stress testing our systems to ensure they are ready for increasing volumes of volunteers further down the line.

During this time we have successfully proven:

• the sign-up journey for both individuals and agents, even with non-standard accounting periods
• volunteers can make and edit quarterly submissions, including non-standard accounting periods
• volunteers can add income sources
• volunteers now have the ability to opt-out of quarterly obligations
• PAYE income pre-populating into estimates for payments on account (POA)
• payments being allocated and assigned correctly to a charge in MTD

We’re continuing to test and improve our systems in the upcoming year, with more participants helping us ensure everything runs smoothly as we scale up.

From April to June 2025 we have been testing the:

• sign-up once again to ensure it can handle larger volumes
• function to enable multiple agents which means volunteers can have one agent for quarterly returns and one for end of year submissions

From July to September 2025 we’ll be testing:

• that taxpayers and agents can make their first quarterly update using the software, fulfilling their quarterly obligation
• the accuracy of the estimated payment on accounts for that tax year based on the taxpayer’s income to date
• the ability to complete specific activities on a taxpayer’s digital tax account – such as adding or ceasing an income source and opting out or in of the service

More updates will follow in our next newsletter.

Spotlight session: your feedback

You said

‘We want HMRC to communicate and engage more with testing participants.’

We did

We created this newsletter and aim to send these every 3 months during the testing phase. This is so you can see how the testing phase is progressing and so we can also gather feedback on your journey.

You said

‘We don’t receive notification that HMRC has received our quarterly updates.’

We did

We know some software products will already be doing this. Taxpayers and agents can also check this at any time via their digital tax account, and we will be updating guidance to make that clearer. We will use this testing year to find out if there is more we need to do.

You said

‘HMRC needs to be able to support more diverse needs and increasing demands as the volume of participants increases.’

We did

All participants joining the testing phase receive a welcome letter; outlining a dedicated customer support team exclusive to beta participants which will help with any issues they are experiencing. In addition to this, we have developed a comprehensive ‘customer support model’ that will enable us to support you throughout the testing phase and beyond.

You also asked, ‘are HMRC developing their own free to use software?’. Whilst HMRC do not provide such software we are committed to ensuring the availability of free software products for small businesses with the simplest affairs in order to use MTD for Income Tax.

There are a number of products available free of charge, so you can choose the right software for you, for MTD for Income Tax . We continue to work with developers to ensure taxpayers and agents have a choice of free and low-cost products to meet their MTD for Income Tax obligations.

Useful information

As part of the testing phase, you and your authorised agent have access to a dedicated MTD for Income Tax customer support team. You can call them on 0300‌‌‌ 322‌‌‌ 9619 (Monday‌‌‌‌‌‌ to‌‌‌ ‌‌‌Friday,‌‌‌ 8‌‌‌am‌‌‌ to‌‌‌ 6‌‌‌p‌‌‌m).

More useful guidance on MTD for Income Tax can be found on GOV‌‌‌.UK.
 
Thanks again for being part of the MTD testing team. Your involvement is helping shape the future of MTD.