When are the Making Tax Digital quarterly update deadlines?

Making Tax Digital replaces one annual return with five filings: four quarterly updates and a final declaration. The dates do not move with your accounting period, they are the same for everyone, and they do not change if you elect to report on calendar quarters instead of the standard ones. Learn the four and you have learned the year.

The four dates

• Quarter 1 covers 6 April to 5 July, and is due by 7 August.
• Quarter 2 covers 6 April to 5 October, and is due by 7 November.
• Quarter 3 covers 6 April to 5 January, and is due by 7 February.
• Quarter 4 covers 6 April to 5 April, and is due by 7 May.
• The final declaration for that tax year is due by the following 31 January, the date you already know from Self Assessment.

Read those period dates again, because they are not a typo. Every quarter starts on 6 April. Quarter 3 is not October to January, it is April to January.

Why the updates are cumulative, and why that helps

HMRC's guidance is explicit: each quarterly update covers from the start of the tax year to the end of the update period, not just the previous three months. The consequence is genuinely good news, and it is the bit most people miss. If you got something wrong in quarter 1, you do not file an amendment. You fix the record and your next update restates the year to date with the better figure. HMRC puts it plainly: you can correct your records without having to resend previous updates.

So a quarterly update is a running total, not a three-month snapshot. That also means the numbers in quarter 4 should look like a full year, because they are.

What actually goes in an update?

Totals, not paperwork. An update carries the totals for each income and expense category you have used, using the same categories as the Self Assessment pages you already fill in. HMRC does not receive details of individual digital records such as a receipt or an invoice. Nobody at HMRC is reading your Screwfix receipts every quarter; they are receiving a handful of summed figures.

If your turnover from that source is under £90,000 you can go further and keep the categorisation to income and expense only, which collapses the hardest part of the job for a one-van business. That option is covered properly in our guide on the digital records you have to keep.

Standard quarters or calendar quarters?

You can elect to line the periods up with month ends instead, so they run to 30 June, 30 September, 31 December and 31 March. It is a convenience for anyone whose bookkeeping already runs on calendar months. The four filing deadlines stay exactly the same either way, so this changes what the periods cover, not when you file.

What happens if you miss one?

Late submission penalties are points-based. Each missed quarterly update or tax return deadline earns a point, and at four points you get a £200 penalty, then a further £200 for each deadline you miss after that. Below the threshold, points fall away automatically 24 months after the missed deadline. Once you have hit four, they stop expiring on their own: you have to file on time for 12 months and clear any outstanding submissions from the previous 24 months before the slate is wiped.

Two things the soft landing never covered, even in 2026/27: filing your tax return late, and paying late. Both carry their own penalties throughout.

Paying late is a separate, steeper problem

Late payment penalties run on their own clock and are charged on the tax, not the filing. Nothing is charged for the first 15 days. For the 2026/27 tax year, 3% of the tax outstanding is charged at day 15 and a further 3% at day 30, then an annual rate of 10% accrues daily from day 31 until it is paid. For 2027/28 the two fixed charges step up from 3% to 4% each. Late filing is an irritant; late payment compounds.

How to make the dates a non-event