The MTD process

From April 2026, self-employed taxpayers must submit their Income Tax Self Assessment (ITSA) digitally under Making Tax Digital (MTD).

Prerequisites

To prepare:

1. Categorise your clients into the 3 MTD intake brackets — to find out eligible clients, use the MTD client list.
2. Discuss signing up to the MTD mandation with your clients.

   Advise your clients they must keep digital records of their income or expenses as well as their normal records for a Self-Assessment — IRIS Elements Cashbook is free to IRIS Elements Tax, IRIS Elements Accounts Production, and IRIS Elements Tax and Accounts subscribers, and can be used by your client to keep these digital records.

3. Create a government agent services account (ASA) (external website).

The process

When your client is happy to be part of the mandation:

None of these steps can be performed in bulk. Each client must be registered individually.

1. Move your client to the correct government agent services account (ASA) (external website).
2. Sign up your client to MTD — https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sign-up-your-business-for-making-tax-digital-for-income-tax (external website).
3. In IRIS Elements, mark your client as enrolled in MTD.
4. To retrieve the client data held by HMRC, connect IRIS Elements to HMRC.

   You need your ASA account credentials created in step 1.

   Quarterly obligations are retrieved from HMRC and displayed in the client record's MTD tab.

   Use the MTD obligations widget on the Home dashboard to track the status of all your clients obligations for all quarters.

5. Create and submit quarterly obligations as directed by HMRC.
6. At the end of the tax year, create and submit the final declaration.

   More information coming soon.