MTD when your properties are split between an SPV and your own name

Picture a landlord, I’ll call him Raj, though the setup is one I saw versions of again and again while researching this. Raj’s got five properties. Three he bought years ago in his own name, before the tax rules on personal buy-to-let got mean. The last two he put inside a limited company, an SPV, because that’s what everyone told him to do once mortgage interest relief got gutted. Perfectly normal portfolio in 2026. And it puts him squarely in the situation that most MTD guides skate right past.

Here’s the question that actually matters for Raj: which of those five properties count when HMRC works out if he’s in Making Tax Digital?

Only your own name counts. Full stop.

The answer is the three personal ones. The two in the SPV don’t count at all, not towards the threshold, not for quarterly updates, nothing. And this is the single most useful thing to get straight, so I’ll be blunt about why.

MTD for Income Tax is a personal tax regime. It works off your Self Assessment, the SA105 property pages specifically. Property held in a limited company isn’t on your Self Assessment at all, because the company is its own legal person. The company pays corporation tax on its rental profit and files a CT600, a totally separate return that MTD for Income Tax doesn’t touch. So when HMRC totals up Raj’s gross rental income to test him against the £50,000 line, only the three personal properties go in the sum. The SPV rents are invisible to that calculation.

Say those three personal properties bring in £42,000 gross between them, and the two SPV ones another £30,000. Raj’s MTD number is £42,000, not £72,000. Whether he’s mandated hangs entirely on that £42,000, and the £30,000 sitting in the company might as well be someone else’s.

Where people get this wrong

The mistake I kept seeing goes the other way, and it’s an expensive one to make in reverse. People assume that because they’ve got a company, or because their total rental empire is clearly over the threshold, they’re automatically in MTD for the lot. So they either over-prepare, buying software they don’t need for the SPV side, or worse, they under-prepare on the personal side because they got the whole thing muddled.

There’s also a quieter trap. If your dividends and salary from the SPV are how you actually get paid, remember those don’t count either. Dividends are investment income, salary is PAYE. Neither is qualifying income for MTD. It genuinely is just your personally-held rental income (plus any sole-trade income, if you have that) that gets measured. Everything flowing out of the company sits outside the test.

One thing worth saying plainly, because I’ve seen it floated as a wheeze: incorporating your remaining personal properties purely to escape MTD is almost always a bad trade. Moving property into a company triggers its own tax consequences, potentially stamp duty and capital gains, that dwarf the admin of a few quarterly updates. If that thought crossed your mind, it’s a conversation for an accountant with your actual numbers, not a decision to make off a comparison site.

What this means for your software

This is where the mixed setup gets genuinely interesting, and where the standard “best MTD software” lists let Raj down completely.

For his MTD obligation, Raj only needs software that handles his three personal properties. That’s the compliance job. But he still has to run the books for the SPV somehow, and a company needs proper accounting, corporation tax, director’s loan tracking, the works. So Raj isn’t really shopping for one tool. He’s deciding whether to run his personal MTD filing and his company accounts in the same product or two different ones. Some of the full platforms, the Xeros and QuickBooks of the world, can technically hold both a personal property business and a company under one roof, though usually as separate subscriptions rather than one tidy account. The landlord-specialist tools, on the other hand, tend to be built purely for personal property income and won’t touch company corporation tax at all.

So the real question for a mixed-portfolio landlord isn’t “which is the best software,” it’s “do I want my personal MTD and my SPV accounts in one place or kept apart, and which tools can even do the personal side well?” That’s a different filter than the generic tables run, and it’s exactly what our selector asks about. Our comparison also flags which products stretch to company accounts and which stay strictly personal.

If you’re still getting your head round the basics of who’s in and who’s out, the main MTD guide covers the threshold rules from scratch.

Quick answers

All my properties are in an SPV. Am I in MTD?

No. If every property you own sits inside a limited company and you have no personally-held rental or sole-trade income, MTD for Income Tax doesn’t apply to you. Your company files a CT600 for corporation tax and that’s a separate regime.

Do my SPV dividends push me over the threshold?

No. Dividends from your company are investment income, and a director’s salary is PAYE employment income. Neither counts as qualifying income for MTD. Only your personally-held property income and any sole-trade turnover get measured.

My personal properties are just under the threshold but my total portfolio is well over. Which wins?

The personal figure wins, because that’s the only figure MTD measures. If your personally-held gross rents are under the current threshold, you’re not mandated yet, no matter how large the SPV side is. Just keep an eye on the threshold dropping to £30,000 in 2027 and £20,000 in 2028.