How to change to calendar quarterly periods for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax
What are quarterly periods?
When you use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, your quarterly updates are sent to HMRC for specific periods during the tax year.
By default, these are standard quarterly periods. These follow the tax year and usually run from 6 April to 5 July, 6 July to 5 October, 6 October to 5 January, and 6 January to 5 April.
What are calendar quarterly periods?
Calendar quarterly periods use month-end dates instead. These usually run from 1 April to 30 June, 1 July to 30 September, 1 October to 31 December, and 1 January to 31 March.
This can be useful if you already keep your records monthly, or if your accounts are prepared to 31 March.
What is the difference?
The main difference is the dates covered by each quarterly update. Standard periods follow the tax year dates, while calendar periods follow calendar months.
The submission deadlines are the same. For example, the first quarterly update is still due by 7 August, whether you use standard or calendar quarterly periods.
How do I change to calendar quarterly periods?
At the moment, this change needs to be made manually by the MTDsorted team.
If you would like to switch from standard quarterly periods to calendar quarterly periods, please contact us and we’ll update this for you.
Once the change has been made, your Income Tax obligations in MTDsorted will use calendar quarterly periods going forward.
Please note that we can only switch you to calendar quarterly periods if you have not yet submitted any quarterly updates for that tax year.
Can I change back later?
If you need to change back to standard quarterly periods, please contact us and we can review this for you.