Guide
Making Tax Digital for dog groomers: what changes, when, and what to do
From April 2026, sole traders over £50,000 keep digital records and send HMRC an update every quarter. Most full-time groomers cross the later thresholds. Here is the whole thing in plain English, and what a booking system can and cannot do about it.
By Owen Fleming, founder of GroomRules · Published
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax means four short updates to HMRC a year instead of one return in January, sent from software rather than typed into a form. It starts in April 2026 for sole traders with turnover over £50,000, April 2027 for over £30,000, and April 2028 for over £20,000. The work is in keeping the records as you go. If every groom is already recorded with its date and price, most of that work is done.
This guide was checked against HMRC's published guidance on 12 October 2026. Thresholds and dates are HMRC's; your accountant knows your situation. The official page is gov.uk: Use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax.
Who it applies to, and when
The test is your qualifying income: the total you took in from self-employment and any property, before expenses. It is turnover, not profit. HMRC looks at the tax return two years back to decide your start date.
| Your qualifying income was over | In the tax year | You join from |
|---|---|---|
| £50,000 | 2024 to 2025 | 6 April 2026 |
| £30,000 | 2025 to 2026 | 6 April 2027 |
| £20,000 | 2026 to 2027 | 6 April 2028 |
| Below £20,000 | No date set yet |
A solo groomer doing 25 grooms a week at £45 turns over about £56,000 a year, so is in the first wave. Twelve a week at the same price is about £27,000, so the third wave, in 2028. The threshold is on what you take before expenses, so a groomer with high costs can be in the first wave on a modest profit.
If you are VAT registered you are already in Making Tax Digital for VAT, which has applied to every VAT-registered business since April 2022. This guide is about the income tax side.
What changes
1. Digital records
Every sale and every expense goes into software, or into a spreadsheet that connects to software, with its date, amount and category. A paper diary and a shoebox of receipts stop being enough. You do not have to send HMRC the records themselves, only the totals, but they must exist digitally.
2. Quarterly updates
Four times a year you send HMRC a summary of your income and expenses for the quarter. The standard quarters run from 6 April, and each update is due a month and a week after the quarter ends: 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May. You can elect to use calendar quarters instead. The updates are totals, not accounts. You do not need to make year-end adjustments until the final declaration.
3. A final declaration instead of a tax return
After the tax year ends you confirm the year's figures, add anything else (employment, savings, pension) and submit by 31 January, the same deadline as today. The tax you pay and when you pay it do not change. What changes is that HMRC has seen your running totals through the year.
4. Penalties move to points
Late updates earn points; enough points earn a fine. One late quarter does not cost you money on its own. A habit of late quarters does.
What this looks like for a groomer
Your income is simple: a list of grooms, each with a date and a price, plus the odd retail sale. Your expenses are the usual: products, equipment, insurance, the van or the premises, training, software. The income side is where groomers lose the most time, because it lives in a diary. If your booking system records every completed groom with its date and price, that list already exists.
A groomer on GroomRules with an accountant does this:
- Every booking you mark complete is recorded with its date and price. Nothing to type.
- At the end of each quarter, open Tax Reports and export the quarter as a CSV. The totals are already grouped by UK tax year and quarter.
- Send the CSV to your accountant, or import it into Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent, where your expenses live.
- Your accountant or the accounting software sends the quarterly update to HMRC.
- After 5 April, the same software sends the final declaration.
GroomRules does the income list and the quarters. It does not track expenses and it does not talk to HMRC. Your accountant or MTD-compatible accounting software does the filing. Cash versus accrual, and which date counts for a groom paid in advance, are questions for them.
What to do this month
- Find your 2024 to 2025 turnover on your last return. That number tells you your start date.
- Ask your accountant which MTD-compatible software they use, and whether they will file the quarterly updates for you.
- Move your bookings into a system that records each groom with a date and a price. From that point, your income records are digital without extra work.
- Keep expense receipts in one place, photographed, from now. The accounting software will want them.
Why it is worth doing early
Nobody is going to enjoy quarterly updates. But a groomer who already knows what she took last quarter, by week, with the slow weeks visible, runs a better business than one who finds out in January. The recall feature in GroomRules exists because of that chart: the quiet month is usually the one where the overdue dogs weren't reminded.