Latest MTD testing figures
April 10, 2026
Real-world testing experience and dropouts
Practitioner feedback (AccountingWEB, Accountancy Age, June–December 2025):
- Sign-up volumes far lower than HMRC targeted: HMRC said in late 2025 that "thousands of volunteers" were testing but TaxNav (≈100 clients) and FreeAgent's Jon Martingale in June 2025 ("around 100 businesses currently in our testing phase") suggest the per-vendor cohort was small (Accountancy Age, June 2025);
- A testing glitch prevented many would-be testers from joining: selecting 2026/27 as start year during sign-up mandated taxpayers as live rather than allowing them to test. AccountingWEB (Tom Herbert, November 2025): "HMRC is preparing a fix for the issue in a 15 December update… allowing those already signed up for 2026/27 to switch to the testing phase." TaxNav's founder Paul Oldridge: "Why take four or five months to fix it?"
- Known software bugs during testing (Oldridge, AccountingWEB): CIS users with brackets in company names cannot submit; payments-on-account disappearing from legacy SA accounts for pilot participants without taxpayer-facing notice;
- HMRC's earlier pilot history (Saffery Champness FOI, AAT): "The data, acquired from HMRC via a freedom of information request, shows that the number of annual sign ups has fallen from 877 in 2018-19 to only 26 in the most recent full year, 2020-21. A subsequent request for information made to HMRC in January 2022 revealed that only nine taxpayers were taking part in the MTD for income tax pilot."
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