Making Tax Digital for Income Tax became mandatory in April for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 — quarterly digital updates instead of one annual return. If that is you and you have not signed up yet, HMRC is not waiting any longer: they have started auto-enrolling the stragglers this month, in stages.
A lot of campsite and park owners are in scope
The threshold catches more holiday park and campsite operators than people expect, for two reasons.
First, it is qualifying income, not profit. Gross takings before costs. A site turning over £70,000 and clearing £20,000 after wages, rates, maintenance and utilities is squarely in scope.
Second, self-employment and property income are added together. If you run the site as a sole trader and also let a cottage, a static or a farmhouse annexe, the two combine towards the threshold. Plenty of diversified farms cross £50,000 on the combination without either strand reaching it alone.
What auto-enrolment means in practice
Being auto-enrolled does not make the obligation any lighter — it simply removes the option of having missed it. You are in, you owe quarterly updates from compatible software, and the clock is running whether or not you have chosen a package.
Being signed up but having no working record-keeping is a worse position than not being signed up at all, because now there is a deadline attached.
The practical bit is the record-keeping
The quarterly updates themselves are summary figures, not a full return four times a year, and payment dates have not changed. The real work is the requirement underneath them: your income and expenses have to be kept digitally, as you go.
MTD wants your income coming out of software, not reconstructed from a shoebox of receipts every quarter. For a campsite that means:
- Bookings recorded as they happen, with the value, the date and the pitch — not totalled up from a diary in October.
- Extras captured on the booking, not as a loose cash line. Awning fees, dogs, electric hook-up, late checkout.
- Expenses photographed when they arrive. This is the half that trips people up, because it is a habit rather than a system.
- A clean split between the site and anything let separately, since they are reported as different income sources even though they count together for the threshold.
Where the software fits
Every booking through HolidayPitches lands in a report that plays nicely with Xero, QuickBooks and Sage — one less thing to build by hand when the next quarterly deadline lands. The income half of MTD is the half that can genuinely be automated, and a site taking bookings through software has already done most of it without meaning to.
That leaves the expenses side, which no booking system can do for you. The habit worth building now, before the next quarter closes, is simply photographing the receipt at the point it is handed to you.
What to do this week
- Check your 2024/25 qualifying income against £50,000 — gross, and combining self-employment with property.
- If you are in scope, check whether you have already been auto-enrolled rather than assuming you have not.
- Pick software from HMRC's compatible list and connect your booking income to it.
- Decide where receipts go, and start today.
None of it is hard. It is simply much easier done in the autumn, while the site is quieting down, than in the week before a deadline in the middle of a season.