Guidance
Making Tax Digital and the Renters' Rights Act, explained by the people who build against the HMRC API rather than read about it. Every figure is sourced and dated.
Making Tax Digital
For MTD software HMRC never says “approved”, only “recognised”, and it does not recommend any product. It scrapped its browsable list in July 2025 for a personalised finder that returned 100 recognised products for a landlord when we ran it, 28 of them free. Here is how to check any product yourself.
· 8 min read
HMRC API Changelog
HMRC moved version 7.0 of its Individual Losses API to production on 16 June 2026, and version 6.0 has rejected any tax year after 2025-26 since January. Two separate resources became one, with three endpoints. A landlord never sees it; their software either kept up or it did not.
· 9 min read
Making Tax Digital
Every MTD filing sends HMRC a description of the machine that made it: your browser, screen size, time zone, IP and connection port. By law. Here are the fourteen headers we send, the two we do not, and the one that made us build a dedicated server to collect it.
· 11 min read
Making Tax Digital
Every guide stops at “click connect and your software does the rest”. Here is the rest: six API calls, eleven mandatory surveillance headers about your own machine, a four-hour token, and the moment HMRC decides whether to trust you.
· 15 min read
Compliance
One calendar for both regimes. Which duties are real today, which are not in force yet, and which quietly stopped existing on 1 May 2026. Most landlord calendars you will find online contain at least one duty that no longer exists.
· 14 min read
Making Tax Digital
Much of the internet says mortgage interest is not reported quarterly under Making Tax Digital. HMRC’s own Update Notice says it is. Put it in the wrong box and HMRC deducts it in full and gives you no relief, and the figures still look plausible.
· 10 min read
Making Tax Digital
MTD quarterly updates are cumulative. Every one restates your figures from 6 April, and each submission invalidates the last. That is why your second update looks double, why a Q1 mistake fixes itself, and why, from 2025-26, HMRC no longer has a quarterly submission endpoint at all.
· 9 min read
Making Tax Digital
HMRC has waived late-filing penalties for MTD quarterly updates for the whole of 2026-27. The update is still mandatory, and late payment still costs you. What the waiver covers, what it does not, and why so many sources have this wrong.
· 8 min read