HMRC fired the starting gun this week on the next phase of Making Tax Digital (MTD): from 6 April 2027, sole traders and landlords earning more than £30,000 a year will have to file quarterly digital tax updates instead of one annual return. In a press release issued on 6 October, HMRC said roughly 1,077,000 more people — on top of those already in the system — need to be signed up and ready well before next April.
For a sense of what that kind of tax bill looks like in practice for a working creator, see our earlier profile of a creator whose fans covered a £40,000 VAT bill — a reminder that once you’re earning at this level, tax stops being an afterthought.
Why it matters to creators: that £30,000 to £50,000 band is exactly where a lot of full-time OnlyFans, Fansly and Fanvue creators sit — earning enough to be a proper business, not quite at agency-and-accountant scale. If that’s you, your record-keeping is about to change from “sort it out once a year” to “sort it out four times a year, digitally, or risk a penalty.”
What’s actually changing
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has been live since 6 April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000. From April 2027 that threshold drops to £30,000, and from April 2028 it falls again to £20,000, sweeping in the majority of working creators over time. Qualifying income is your gross trading income — subscriptions, tips, PPV, custom content, everything — before you deduct expenses, not your profit after costs.
Once you’re in scope, HMRC’s policy guidance requires you to keep digital records throughout the year, send a quarterly update of income and expenses using MTD-compatible software, and then submit a final end-of-year declaration covering reliefs and allowances — replacing the old one-shot Self Assessment return. The quarterly updates are running totals, not mini tax returns, but they do mean HMRC sees your numbers four times a year instead of once.
The £50k cohort is already mid-rollout — and the next deadline is weeks away
This isn’t theoretical. Creators already over £50,000 have been filing under MTD since April, and HMRC says more than 436,000 sole traders and landlords have already sent their first quarterly update. Their next one is due 7 November 2026 — so if you crossed £50,000 last tax year and haven’t registered yet, that’s your immediate priority, not April 2027.
“Signing up now means you can prepare and familiarise yourself with the process before it becomes mandatory next April,” said Craig Ogilvie, HMRC’s Director of Making Tax Digital, in the 6 October announcement.
For the incoming £30,000 cohort, HMRC is encouraging early sign-up through its six-month countdown campaign, including a voluntary pilot you can join before it’s compulsory — useful if you’d rather find software problems now than during your first live quarter next spring.
What happens if you ignore it
HMRC isn’t issuing penalty points for late quarterly updates during the 2026/27 transition year, but that grace period doesn’t last forever, and late tax returns and late payment penalties still apply as normal right now. From 6 April 2027, a points-based system kicks in for missed quarterly deadlines: each missed update earns a point, and four points trigger a £200 fixed penalty, with points expiring after a run of on-time filing. It’s not designed to be brutal on its own, but combined with the admin of switching software mid-tax-year, it’s the kind of thing that’s much easier to deal with if you start now rather than in March.
Does platform reporting change anything?
Separately, remember that OnlyFans and similar platforms already report your earnings data directly to HMRC under the platform reporting rules, so the department already has a rough picture of what you make before you file anything. MTD doesn’t change what counts as taxable income or introduce a new tax — it changes how often and in what format you report it. If you haven’t yet registered for Self Assessment at all, that’s a separate and more urgent problem; our earlier piece on the Self Assessment registration deadline covers that first step, and we wrote about the £50,000 rollout itself back in August in our guide to MTD going live.
US creators don’t have a direct equivalent, but it’s worth knowing HMRC’s shift toward more frequent digital reporting is part of a global trend — the IRS has been tightening its own 1099 reporting thresholds too, which we covered in our piece on the new $2,000 1099 threshold.
What to do now
- Add up last year’s gross platform income. If it’s over £30,000 (before expenses), you’ll be in scope from April 2027 — over £50,000 and you should already be filing.
- Register early on GOV.UK rather than waiting for HMRC to write to you; an accountant or agent can do this on your behalf if you use one.
- Pick MTD-compatible software now and start keeping digital records of subscriptions, tips, PPV and custom work as you go, rather than reconstructing a year of bank statements in March.
- Separate business and personal banking if you haven’t already — it makes quarterly updates dramatically faster to prepare.
- If you’re already over £50,000, check your 7 November deadline is covered before worrying about 2027 at all.
This is general information, not legal or tax advice — speak to a qualified accountant about your specific situation.
