Per calendar year quarterly obligations

When submitting quarterly updates for HMRC's Making Tax Digital (MTD) mandation, clients are assigned standard tax quarters by default. For customers (typically those who are self-employed) who's accounting period runs up until 31st March, you can switch their MTD obligations to follow calendar quarters.

Who should switch?

Self-employment clients can switch if their accounting period runs to 31st March rather than 5th April. Calendar quarters align their obligation periods with their existing accounting dates, reducing administrative burden.

You can only change the obligation period at the start of the tax year, before any quarterly submissions have been made.

Once a quarter has been submitted, the option is locked and you cannot switch between standard and calendar quarters for that tax year.

Switch to calendar quarterly obligations

1. From the Clients menu, select Clients list.
2. Change the client list view to either Active clients or a custom view that includes all relevant clients.

If any of the entries are greyed out and you cannot select them, this is a restricted item — the parent client record has been set to Private and you do not have access. If you believe this is a mistake, contact your IRIS Elements administrator. Users who have Administrator level permissions are able to view all public and private client records, even those where they are not named as assigned users.

3. Open the relevant client record.
4. Go to the MTD tab.
5. Make sure no obligations have been submitted for this tax year.
6. From the Self employment obligations tile, select the vertical 3 dots.
7. Switch on the toggle to Request Calendar year obligations.
8. Select Save changes.
9. Back in the MTD tab, make sure the quarterly periods have been updated to reflect from 1st April to 31st March the following year.

Clients moving to the calendar quarterly submission are still subject to the same deadline structure. Quarterly submissions are due 1 month and 7 days after that period ends, for example, for the 31st March period end date, the submission deadline would be 7th May.