MTD for Income Tax is no longer coming. It is here. From April 2026, sole traders and landlords earning above £50,000 are required to submit quarterly updates to HMRC using compliant software. The £30,000 threshold follows in April 2027. Somewhere north of five million people will eventually be mandated.

Most of them have no idea what to do.

That is not an exaggeration. The volume of searches around “what is Making Tax Digital”, “do I need MTD software”, and “find an accountant for MTD” has climbed sharply since the April mandate landed. People are confused, they are worried about getting it wrong, and a significant number of them are actively looking for a professional to help.

This is the pipeline. Here is how to get in front of it.

Understand what clients are actually worried about

The most common fear is not the software. It is the quarterly cadence. People who have spent their adult lives doing one tax return a year are now being told they need to submit something to HMRC four times a year. The immediate assumption is that this means four tax bills, four sets of penalties if they get it wrong, four opportunities to make a costly mistake.

As an accountant you know that quarterly updates are not tax bills - they are summaries of income and expenses, nothing more. But your prospective clients do not know that. The accountant who explains this clearly and calmly, before asking for anything, is the one who earns the trust.

Lead with education. It converts better than any pitch.

Where the demand is concentrated

The £50,000 threshold catches a specific profile: established sole traders and landlords who have been filing Self Assessment for years, are reasonably organised, but have never used accounting software beyond maybe a spreadsheet. They are not tech-averse, they are just unfamiliar with what MTD requires.

Landlords in particular are underserved. Most property-focused accountants are either generalists who added landlord clients over time, or boutique firms whose fees reflect that specialisation. There is a large middle ground of landlords with one or two properties, earning £50,000 to £100,000, who want competent help at a fair price and do not know where to find it.

Sole traders in the creative, consulting, and trades sectors are another concentrated pocket. Many of them have been doing their own Self Assessment for years and are now realising that quarterly submissions require either more time or outside help.

How to position yourself for inbound

Three things matter for organic discovery right now:

Specificity beats generalism. “MTD for Income Tax accountant” ranks better and converts better than “accountant for small businesses”. If you work with landlords, say so explicitly. If you specialise in a trade or sector, lead with it. HMRC’s mandate has created search intent that did not exist two years ago and the competition for it is still relatively thin.

Google Business Profile is underused by accountants. A complete profile with MTD mentioned in your services description, a handful of genuine reviews, and regular posts puts you in front of local searches that your website alone will not catch. It takes two hours to set up properly and most of your competitors have not bothered.

Content answers questions before they are asked. A short post explaining what quarterly updates actually mean, or what records a landlord needs to keep for MTD, costs nothing to publish and will surface in searches for months. You do not need a content strategy. You need five useful posts that answer the questions your prospective clients are actually typing.

The software question

Clients will ask what software they need. This matters more than it used to because the software is now part of the compliance process, not just a convenience. A client using non-compliant software - or no software - cannot meet their MTD obligations regardless of how good their accountant is.

The practical answer is that software which connects directly to HMRC’s systems is what your clients need. What that software costs, how easy it is for a non-accountant to use, and whether it allows you as their accountant to see their data without them emailing you spreadsheets - these are the things worth evaluating.

DoneTax+ is built specifically for this. It is an agent-only platform that lets you manage MTD for Income Tax submissions for property and self-employment clients from a single dashboard, with direct data connection to each client’s account. Your clients use DoneTax or DoneSE at £4.99 a month. You use DoneTax+ to oversee submissions, review figures, and file on their behalf. No spreadsheets. No chasing.

List your practice on the DoneLabs Accountant Directory

We run a free directory of MTD-ready accountants at donelabs.co.uk/directory. It is searchable by location and is designed specifically to connect landlords and sole traders who are looking for help with MTD to accountants who are set up to provide it.

Listing is free and takes five minutes. If you use DoneTax+, your listing notes the direct data connection so prospective clients know the onboarding will be frictionless.

As the mandate expands to the £30,000 threshold in 2027, the volume of people searching for MTD accountants will increase significantly. Getting listed now puts you in front of that demand before it peaks.

You can list your practice at donelabs.co.uk/directory/join.

DoneLabs builds MTD compliance software for UK taxpayers and the accountants who work with them. DoneTax, DoneSE, DoneTax+ and DoneVAT cover every current Making Tax Digital mandate.