If you are self-employed and also let property, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax treats your trade and your lettings as separate businesses, but tests them together. Your self-employment turnover and your property income are added up for the threshold, and if the total is over it, both businesses come into Making Tax Digital. HMRC's statistics, based on 2023/24 returns, count about 141,000 people with both kinds of income over £50,000, and another 172,000 between £20,000 and £50,000.
How the threshold works when you have both
Qualifying income is your total self-employment and property income before expenses. HMRC's own example is someone with £25,000 of rent and £27,000 of self-employment turnover: qualifying income of £52,000, over the first threshold, even though neither source is over £50,000 on its own.
- From 6 April 2026: over £50,000 on the 2024/25 return.
- From 6 April 2027: over £30,000 on the 2025/26 return.
- From 6 April 2028: over £20,000 on the 2026/27 return.
Some details that matter for people with both:
- Jointly owned property counts at your share. See MTD for jointly owned property.
- Foreign property counts too if you were UK resident.
- VAT: if you are VAT registered and use the cash basis, VAT counts if you include it in your income.
- A salary does not count, and neither do pensions, dividends or a share of partnership profit.
More on this in our qualifying income guide.
How many quarterly updates you send
One per business, per quarter. HMRC counts each trade as its own business, all your UK lettings as one UK property business, and any overseas lettings as one foreign property business. So:
| Your income | Updates each quarter | Updates a year |
|---|---|---|
| One trade and UK lettings | 2 | 8 |
| One trade, UK lettings and a flat abroad | 3 | 12 |
| Two trades and UK lettings | 3 | 12 |
They all share the same deadlines: 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. At the end of the year there is still just one tax return covering everything, due by 31 January. See the full MTD deadlines calendar.
Keeping the records apart
- Separate digital records for each business. Your trade's income and costs, and your property income and costs, are recorded and reported separately.
- Shared costs, such as a phone used for both, need splitting between the businesses and any private use.
- Simpler categories are allowed for a business whose turnover is under £90,000, tested separately for each one. Residential landlords must still record which expenses are residential finance costs.
- Separate bank accounts are not required, but they make it much easier to see which business a transaction belongs to.
One product or two?
Either works. HMRC says you can use a separate product for each income source, for example if you are a builder and a landlord, as long as your products between them send every update and the tax return. What you cannot do is send the same business's updates from two products. Many products cover both a trade and UK property; check HMRC's software finder, which lets you filter by income source.
Common mistakes
- Testing each income separately. The threshold is the combined total.
- Using profit. The test is turnover and gross rent, before costs.
- Mortgage interest as an ordinary expense. For residential lets it is a finance cost, relieved at the basic rate in the tax calculation. See Section 24 explained.
- Forgetting a property abroad. It is its own business with its own updates.
If one income falls
You are tested on the combined total, so a drop in one source does not take you out if the other keeps you over. Once you are in, you can choose to opt out only after your qualifying income has been below the threshold for three tax years in a row, or if an amended return for the previous year takes you below.
VoxaMTD for self-employment and property
VoxaMTD covers a trade and UK lettings in one account. Transactions from your bank feed or a CSV upload are categorised to the trade or the property, and on the submissions page you send each business's quarterly update, then one tax return at the end of the year. Filing is free. It does not yet cover foreign property or calendar update periods. It files directly to HMRC's live Making Tax Digital service. It is not yet listed on HMRC's published software finder.
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This guide is general information based on HMRC's published guidance as at 27 September 2026. It is not tax advice.