Missed an MTD Quarterly Update? Here's What Actually Happens

On 12 August 2026, HMRC published the first real numbers on how the April 2026 wave of Making Tax Digital was actually going: 864,000 sole traders and landlords were mandated in from that date, and just 436,000 had filed their first quarterly update by the 7 August deadline. That leaves roughly 428,000 people who didn’t — too large a number to be a handful of stragglers. If you’re one of them, here’s the honest, unpanicked version of what happens next.

Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and does not constitute tax advice. Consult a qualified tax adviser or accountant for advice specific to your circumstances.

The good news: no points for a late quarterly update in your first year

For anyone mandated into MTD from 6 April 2026, HMRC will not add penalty points for late quarterly updates during the 2026–27 tax year. That covers all four of this year’s quarterly deadlines — 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. Miss one, or all of them, and it doesn’t put a point on your record this year.

This is a genuine, gov.uk-confirmed first-year concession, not a rumour or a loophole — and it’s worth knowing clearly, because plenty of the 428,000 people who missed 7 August are probably assuming the worst right now. Missing that one deadline, on its own, isn’t the penalty event it would be in any other year.

What still gets penalised, waiver or not

The waiver is specific to quarterly update lateness. Two things sit outside it entirely:

• Your tax return. The final declaration, due 31 January, is a different deadline from the quarterly updates, and it still earns a point like normal if it’s late. For the full mechanics of how points build up and what they cost, see MTD penalty points explained.
• Late payment. If you owe tax and pay it late, the payment penalty structure still applies, with one narrower first-year concession layered in. Pay within 15 days of the due date and there’s no penalty regardless of the year. Pay 16–30 days late and you’d normally face a 3% penalty on what you owed at day 15 — that specific tier is also waived in your first year under MTD, so most people who are only a couple of weeks late on payment escape it too. Go past 30 days, though, and the concessions stop: you’ll face 3% of what was owed at day 15, another 3% of what’s still owed at day 30, and then 10% a year charged daily from day 31 until you pay. Interest keeps running throughout, currently 7.75% (base rate + 4%), and nothing above touches it.

Worth being precise about the difference between these two: the quarterly-update waiver and the 16–30-day payment waiver are two separate concessions, not one blanket “first year doesn’t count” rule.

How to catch up (it’s easier than it looks)

Because quarterly updates are cumulative — each one covers 6 April to the end of the current period, not just its own slice — your next update automatically absorbs the one you missed. If you missed 7 August (which covered 6 April to 5 July), your 7 November update covers 6 April to 5 October regardless, so the figures from the missed period are simply folded into the bigger total rather than needing a separate late submission. See MTD quarterly update deadlines for the full cumulative mechanic.

Practically, that means: get your records for the missed period straightened out now, and let the next deadline do the catching up for you. You don’t need to file a standalone “late” update for the period you missed — you need your underlying records to be accurate before the next cumulative deadline arrives. If you’ve missed more than one deadline in a row, it’s worth talking to an accountant to make sure nothing’s slipping through before the tax return stage.

Here’s what that looks like in practice. Say you missed 7 August entirely — your 6 April to 5 July figures never got submitted. Come November, you don’t file two updates to make up for it; you file one, covering 6 April to 5 October, with the missed quarter’s income and expenses simply included in that wider total. HMRC sees a single cumulative figure that happens to span three extra months, not a gap followed by a separate catch-up submission.

Don’t let this drift into the return deadline

The waiver covers quarterly-update lateness — it doesn’t touch the tax return itself. The 31 January final declaration is the same hard deadline it’s always been, and it draws on the same records the quarterly updates were supposed to keep current. Being behind on quarterlies during the year doesn’t disappear at year-end; you’ll still need accurate, complete totals for the return, waiver or not. Treat the first year’s leniency as breathing room to build the habit properly, not as a reason to leave everything until January.

If you’re already behind, start here

Don’t try to reconstruct a missed period from memory. Pull your bank and card statements for the period, start categorising, and get current before the next deadline rather than the one you already missed. For a step-by-step run-through of the whole first year, see our first-year MTD record-keeping checklist.

This is exactly the kind of catch-up Taxr is built for. Photograph a backlog of paper receipts and the AI extracts the vendor, date, total and VAT from each one, filing it under a tax-aligned category without manual data entry — a fast way to turn a shoebox of missed-quarter receipts into clean, categorised records before your next deadline arrives.

Download Taxr free — 10 scans on us and get ahead of the next deadline instead of the last one.