HMRC will auto-enrol you into Making Tax Digital from September if you have not signed up

If your self-employed driving or courier income was £50,000 or more in the 2024/25 tax year, you should already be using Making Tax Digital (MTD) for Income Tax. HMRC has confirmed that from September 2026 it will start signing people up automatically if they have not done it themselves.

This matters because MTD is not just a different way of filing once a year. Once you are in it, you need to:

• Keep digital records of your income and expenses, rather than a shoebox of receipts or a single spreadsheet you update in January.
• Send HMRC a quarterly update, every three months, using compatible software.
• Submit a final declaration at the end of the tax year, replacing the old Self Assessment return.

HMRC says over 436,000 sole traders and landlords have already sent their first quarterly update since MTD became mandatory in April 2026, and more than 570,000 have signed up in total. If you are above the £50,000 threshold and have not registered, waiting for HMRC to do it for you from September means you lose the choice of when and how you get set up, so it is worth registering yourself now if this applies to you.

If your driving income is under £50,000, nothing changes for you yet. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027 and £20,000 from April 2028, so it is worth keeping an eye on your total income across all the platforms you drive for, not just one.