Submitting your Making Tax Digital (MTD) tax return through tiney

If you're on Making Tax Digital (MTD), you send HMRC a summary of your income and expenses every quarter, plus a final declaration at the end of the year. You can do this through tiney, or through an accountant or your own software. Whichever you choose, the first two sections below apply to everyone.

You need to use MTD for Income Tax from April 2026 if your gross income from self-employment and property was over £50,000 in the 2024/25 tax year. Gross means before expenses. The threshold drops to £30,000 from April 2027, and is planned to drop to £20,000 from April 2028.

Some people can apply for an exemption. You can check if you can get an exemption on GOV.UK.

Whichever way you choose to submit, you first need to sign up for Making Tax Digital with HMRC. This is a one-off step, and it's separate from connecting your account to tiney.

If you already have an accountant, or you use accounting software that's recognised by HMRC, it's worth using that for your submissions. Some business bank accounts include free HMRC-recognised filing too. Monzo and Starling include it, and FreeAgent is free with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Mettle accounts. You can check what's recognised on HMRC's list of compatible software.

Whichever route you use, your tiney tax export is a handy way to check your figures or import them. Here's how to export your tax records.

You can connect your HMRC account and submit directly through tiney. A submission is easier to complete on a larger screen, so you may prefer to do it on web.tiney.co rather than in the app.

tiney submits a single, consolidated figure for your childminding income and your childminding expenses. HMRC only allows a consolidated expenses figure if your turnover is below the VAT registration threshold, which is currently £90,000 a year. If you earn more than that, HMRC needs a detailed breakdown of your expenses, so the tiney submission won't be right for you.

The tiney submission also doesn't cover everything else HMRC might need for your Self Assessment. In particular, it won't include:

If any of these apply to you, submitting through tiney on its own may not be right for your tax affairs, and you may need to submit outside tiney.

tiney can't give tax advice. If you're not sure whether this is right for you, speak to an accountant. You can also contact Morton Michel's tax advice line on 0330 303 1466 (quoting your policy number).

You'll need:

It's also worth getting your figures ready first, since that's what we use to fill in your submission. Before you start, make sure you've added all your invoices and expenses for the period in the tiney app.

There are two ways to get to your submissions:

You'll see a card asking you to connect your HMRC account. Click Connect HMRC.

You'll be taken to GOV.UK, where HMRC will ask you to give tiney permission to connect to your account. The screen confirms that tiney is requesting permission to:

Click Continue.

Sign in with your HMRC User ID and password. Then, give tiney permission to view and change your self assessment information. This is what we'll need to submit your returns.

Once you've signed in and confirmed the permissions, you'll come back to tiney automatically.

Back on tiney, you'll see a confirmation that your HMRC account has connected successfully. You only need to do this once. After the first setup, tiney remembers your connection and you can go straight to making submissions next time. Two setup steps appear below the confirmation. Complete both before you make a submission.

Click Add NI number. A box appears asking for your National Insurance number. You can find this on a payslip, P60, or any letters from HMRC. Enter your number and click Save.

Step 1 updates to show your number has been added, with it confirmed on screen.

Click Select business. If you have more than one business registered with HMRC, you'll be asked to choose which one you want to manage tax submissions for. Choose your childminding business and click Save.

Once setup is complete, you'll see a list of the submissions you need to make for the current tax year. MTD asks for four quarterly updates plus a final declaration at the end of the year, and tiney shows all of these in your list. At the top of the page, you'll see a tab for each tax year, so you can switch between them to see submissions for previous or upcoming years. Click into any period to open the submission form.

The form includes:

Where tiney already has this information, we'll fill it in for you. Review the figures, make any changes you need, and click Submit.

You're responsible for what you submit to HMRC, so check the figures are complete and accurate, including anything you earned or spent outside tiney. If you're unsure, get advice from an accountant or tax adviser.

For income, we look at every invoice you've been paid for during the period. That includes funding from local authorities, if you offer funded hours and that funding is paid into your tiney Wallet.

If your local authority funding isn't paid into your tiney Wallet, we estimate it based on the care hours you've entered in the tiney app. This is the same figure we use to work out your tiney membership fee.

If income is missing, or you think our figures are wrong, get in touch with the tiney team. We can adjust the calculation for local authority invoices. Before you do, export your tax information from the tiney app to get a transaction-by-transaction view. That helps you see exactly what's different from what you expected.

Your consolidated expenses come from the expenses you've logged in the tiney app. You can add and edit these in the app, so if the figure is wrong, make your changes there and they'll flow through to your submission.

You make four quarterly updates a year, plus a final declaration at the end of the year:

Your first update, for 6 April to 5 July 2026, is due by 7 August 2026.