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MTD for ITSA isn’t coming. It’s here. And the submission volume is about to quadruple.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment goes live for landlords and sole traders with income over £50,000 in April 2026. The following year, the threshold drops to £30,000. By 2027, hundreds of thousands of self-assessment clients will be filing quarterly updates instead of an annual return.
For accountants in practice, that’s not a small change. It’s a structural shift in workload. Every client in scope moves from one annual submission to four quarterly updates plus a final declaration. The administrative overhead (preparation, review, narrative, client communication, submission) multiplies accordingly.
The practices that prepare now will absorb this workload without hiring. The ones that don’t will be scrambling for headroom. Here’s where AI fits in.
What MTD for ITSA Actually Requires
Under MTD for ITSA, clients with qualifying income must:
- Maintain digital records of their income and expenses using compatible software
- Submit quarterly updates to HMRC through approved software
- Submit an end-of-period statement (EOPS) at the tax year end
- Submit a final declaration to crystallise the tax liability
The quarterly updates are not full returns — they’re summaries of income and expenses for the period. But they still require a check by the accountant, any necessary adjustments, and typically a communication to the client confirming what’s been submitted. Multiply that by 50 clients and you see the volume problem immediately.
Where the Time Goes
For a practice with 50 MTD-eligible clients, quarterly updates mean 200 submissions per year. Conservative estimate per client per quarter:
- Review of digital records: 10–15 minutes
- Bookkeeping adjustments: 5–20 minutes (varies)
- Client summary or confirmation email: 8–12 minutes
- The actual submission: 5 minutes
That’s 30–50 minutes per client per quarter. Or 100–166 hours per year of new workload — on top of the annual tax return process, which still exists in the form of the final declaration. That’s not manageable without either hiring additional staff or finding a way to compress the time on routine tasks.
What AI Can Handle in the MTD Workflow
AI won’t do your MTD submissions. It isn’t HMRC-approved software. But it can dramatically reduce the time spent on the surrounding work.
Client communications.The standard quarterly update confirmation — “we’ve submitted your Q1 update, here’s a summary” — looks largely the same for every client. An AI workflow produces a complete draft in under 30 seconds. You review and personalise. Total time: 90 seconds instead of 8 minutes.
Client preparation chasers. Chasing clients for their quarterly records is time-consuming. AI can draft a personalised-feeling chasing email in seconds, customised by client type and deadline.
Narrative summaries. Where quarterly updates include notes on unusual income or expenses, AI can draft those narratives from the data you feed it. Same principle as the bank reconciliation narrative workflow— structured input, quality output.
FAQ responses.As MTD for ITSA rolls out, clients will have questions. A lot of them. Building an AI-assisted response library means you’re not writing the same explanation from scratch every time.
A Note on Compliance
AI drafts require professional review. Nothing generated by AI should be submitted to HMRC without a qualified person checking it first. That applies to narrative summaries, client emails, and any other output. AI handles drafting and formatting. The accountant handles verification, professional judgement, and sign-off.
If a client asks whether AI was used in preparing their communications — the honest answer is yes, in the same way that word-processing software is used. The content is verified and approved by a qualified professional. Consider adding an AI use disclosure clause to your engagement letters to make this explicit.
Getting Ahead of the Workload
The accountants who will handle MTD for ITSA most comfortably are the ones who systematise now. That means:
- Building standard workflow templates for each routine MTD task (confirmation email, chaser, FAQ response)
- Testing those templates against real client scenarios before April 2026
- Training yourself (or staff) to use them consistently, so the time savings compound
The MTD and VAT workflow systems in the Practiq AI Workflow Toolkit were built specifically for this context — including quarterly update confirmation emails, client preparation chasers, and narrative templates for different income types (rental, trading, mixed). They’re MTD-aware: the workflows include the right framing for quarterly vs. annual submissions and flag the EOPS and final declaration steps appropriately.
Start now. Your April 2026 MTD clients are already on your books. You know their situations. Build the workflow templates before the quarterly submissions start, not the week they’re due. See also: the workflow framework that makes all of this work.
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