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Six posts. Two subjects. One rule: we publish the figure that is true in month nineteen, not the one on the marketing page — including the times that costs us money.
The blog answers specific questions. The pillars answer the whole question. If you are new here, start with whichever one describes your problem.
Problem · Pillar guide
Over £50,000 — live now · Over £30,000 — 6 April 2027
Who is in scope and when, what qualifying income actually means, what you file and what changes about your records. No product pitch.
Read the MTD pillar →
Solution · Pillar guide
QuickBooks £186 · Xero £307.20 · Sage £378 · FreeAgent £399 or £0
Every entry plan, every promotion, every total after the discount expires, and a verdict by business type. Ex VAT, verified 31 July 2026.
Read the software pillar →
Filter by category, or read the lot. Everything here was verified on 31 July 2026; promotional pricing across this market changes roughly monthly.
Last verified 31 July 2026. Prices are ex VAT and taken from each vendor’s own UK pricing pages. Promotional offers change roughly monthly and are normally for new customers only — check the live price before you subscribe.
Showing all 6 posts.
The live deadline. If your gross self-employment and property income topped £30,000 in 2025/26, you are in from 6 April 2027 — and the year that decides it has already ended.
Last updated 31 July 2026 9 min read
Four submissions a year sounds like four tax returns. It is not. What is genuinely in an update, what is deliberately left out, and why we send you to GOV.UK for the dates.
Last updated 31 July 2026 8 min read
Xero £3.20 to £16. QuickBooks £1 to £10. FreeAgent £9.50 to £19. Every headline price in this market is a six-month price — here is the 24-month one.
Last updated 31 July 2026 8 min read
The full product, free, permanently, if you bank with the right four. It saves £399 over 24 months and it earns us nothing — which is exactly why we wrote it.
Last updated 31 July 2026 7 min read
QuickBooks Sole Trader cannot file VAT. Registering forces a move to Simple Start at £16 — and a £121.20 advantage over Xero collapses to £9.60 across 24 months.
Last updated 31 July 2026 7 min read
Bridging software can keep the spreadsheet alive. But full accounting software starts at £0, and quarterly reporting is what finally makes a bank feed worth having.
Last updated 31 July 2026 8 min read
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Every figure here is either traceable to a vendor’s own pricing page or to our published MTD research — and where a fact is HMRC’s to set, we send you to GOV.UK rather than guessing.
Three rules we hold ourselves to, because they are the ones this genre usually breaks:
There is no named author persona here and no invented biography. These pages are published by Fizoral as an organisation, and the credibility is meant to come from the workings rather than from a headshot. The workings are at how we research, and the funding model is at affiliate disclosure.
Not financial or tax advice. Everything here is general information for UK businesses. For your own circumstances, confirm with HMRC or a qualified accountant.
The blog is the way in. These are the pages that do the heavy lifting.
MTD · Eligibility
Who is in scope, by income level and start year, including what counts as qualifying income and what does not.
MTD · Timetable
Every start date and threshold in the rollout, and which tax year each one is judged on.
Software · Price
The full workings behind £186, £307.20, £378 and £399 — plus the two routes that cost £0.
Software · Free
The two real £0 routes in the UK market, the trials that are not free, and where each one runs out.
Head to head
£307.20 against £186 over 24 months, and the VAT restriction that shrinks the gap to £9.60.
Reviews
The package most likely to be free at the point of use, and whether it would earn £399 if it were not.