The threshold is your turnover, not what you live on. Here is the caseload that crosses it at your fee, and what quarterly reporting actually asks of you.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax replaces one annual tax return with four quarterly updates and a final declaration. Whether it applies to you is decided by your qualifying income — your gross fees, before a single expense comes out. Not your profit, and certainly not what you take home.
That is the part that catches therapists. A practice can be well inside the £50,000 threshold on the money it actually lives on and well over it on turnover. At £80 a session, 14 clients a week is enough — that is £51,520 of fees and £38,729 of take-home.
| Your fee | Over £20,000 (April 2028) | Over £30,000 (April 2027) | Over £50,000 (April 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| £50 a session | 9 a week | 14 a week | 22 a week |
| £60 a session | 8 a week | 11 a week | 19 a week |
| £70 a session | 7 a week | 10 a week | 16 a week |
| £80 a session | 6 a week | 9 a week | 14 a week |
| £90 a session | 5 a week | 8 a week | 13 a week |
Read it as a warning about turnover rather than a target. At £60 a session, 8 clients a week is enough to be in scope by April 2028, and 19 a week puts you in the group that is already reporting. These assume 46 working weeks a year and fees as your only self-employed income — see below for why that last part matters.
The first group crossed into it on 6 April 2026 and has already filed: the opening quarterly update for 2026/27 was due on 7 August 2026. The £30,000 and £20,000 groups follow in April 2027 and April 2028, which is most of private practice.
You do not decide this for yourself. HMRC works out your qualifying income from the returns you have already filed and writes to you — so the year that puts you in scope is one you have finished, not the one you are living in. If a letter arrives, it is about figures you filed some time ago.
Qualifying income adds together gross self-employment income and gross property income, before expenses, across everything you do. A therapist at £35,000 of fees who also lets a flat is measured on the fees plus the rent, and can be in scope while each source on its own looks comfortably under.
Supervision, training, workshops and EAP work all count as self-employed income too. If your practice income comes from more than one place, add the gross figures before checking yourself against the table.
What changes. You keep your records digitally in MTD-compatible software rather than a spreadsheet or a shoebox, and you send HMRC a summary of income and expenses four times a year — due 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May, each covering the quarter that ended a month earlier. A quarterly update is a running total, not a tax return: it calculates nothing and asks for no payment. After the fourth one you make a final declaration, which is the part that does the job your tax return used to.
What does not change. The tax itself. The bands, the personal allowance, Class 4 National Insurance and what you should be setting aside are all exactly as they were. Nor do the payment dates: 31 January and 31 July, payments on account included. MTD changes how often you report, not what you owe or when you pay it.
Quarterly reporting punishes leaving the bookkeeping until January. Four deadlines a year means the records have to be current four times a year, which for most therapists is the real cost of MTD — not the software, the habit. The practices that will find it easy are the ones already recording each session's fee and each cost as they happen.
If you are in the £50,000 group your quarters are already running. If you are in the £30,000 or £20,000 groups you have a year or two, and the useful thing to do with them is to start keeping records the way you will have to keep them anyway. That, and knowing your gross — which is the number that decides all of this, and the one therapists tend to think about least.
The threshold is gross fees, which is the first line the calculator gives you. Put your fee and caseload in and see where you sit.
Calculate my take-home →