Making Tax Digital and Corporation Tax: What HMRC Has Actually Confirmed

Correction, September 2026: an earlier version of this article said Making Tax Digital for Corporation Tax (MTD for CT) was coming, with a pilot from April 2026 and mandation after 2027. That was wrong, and we have rewritten the article. HMRC's Transformation Roadmap states directly that HMRC "do not intend to introduce MTD for CT". No quarterly Corporation Tax updates are planned. If you read the earlier version and started preparing for quarterly CT filing, you can stop.

What Making Tax Digital does still cover. MTD for VAT has been mandatory since April 2022 for VAT-registered businesses, and that is unchanged. MTD for Income Tax Self Assessment applies to sole traders and landlords with qualifying income, phased in from April 2026. Both are real and both continue. Neither applies to your UK limited company's Corporation Tax position. If your UK company is VAT-registered, MTD for VAT already applies to it; if it is not, MTD does not currently touch it at all.

What is actually changing for Corporation Tax. Rather than MTD, HMRC says it is developing an approach to the future administration of Corporation Tax suited to the range of companies that pay it, from micro-companies to multinationals and charities, and that it will consult on the design and timing. That means there is something to watch, but nothing to comply with yet, and no announced start date. Treat any source giving you a firm MTD for CT date with caution.

The separate change that is real. From April 2028, Companies House will require annual accounts to be filed using commercial software, ending web filing and paper filing. This is a Companies House change, not an HMRC one, and it is not MTD. It is frequently confused with MTD for CT, including by us in the earlier version of this article. Small and micro companies will also have to file a profit and loss account. That is the deadline worth putting in your calendar.

What Arab directors should do now. Moving from spreadsheets or paper to cloud accounting (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage) is still worth doing, but for practical reasons rather than a looming mandate: cleaner year-end preparation, less reconstruction of a year of records from a bundle of invoices, and readiness for the April 2028 software-only filing requirement. For a Gulf-based director who currently sends everything once a year, connecting cloud accounting to your UK business bank account (Wise, Revolut Business, Tide) keeps records current with very little ongoing effort.