Making Tax Digital Is Coming — And Compliance Shouldn't Cost You

From April 2026, HMRC's Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment (MTD for ITSA) will require landlords earning over £50,000 from property income to keep digital records and submit quarterly updates. By April 2027, that threshold drops to £30,000.

For many landlords, this feels like yet another cost. Most MTD software on the market charges monthly fees or locks essential features behind paywalls from day one. You are being told you must go digital and then asked to pay through the nose for the privilege.

We think that is wrong.

Radical Transparency: The Free Plan vs. The Paid Plan

At Latch, we believe in radical transparency. So let us be totally upfront: yes, we have a free plan and a paid plan, and yes, our free plan is capped at 3 leases.

Why 3 leases? Because everyday landlords with smaller portfolios are the ones hit hardest by new compliance costs. If you have 1 to 3 leases, you should not have to pay a monthly subscription just to follow a government mandate.

Here is exactly how our model works:

The Free Plan: Everything You Need for up to 3 Leases

Our free tier is not a "lite" version stripped of essential tools. If you have 3 leases or fewer, every core MTD feature we build is available to you at no cost.

• Digital record keeping — your books are always up to date and stored securely
• Quarterly summary reports — generate the exact summaries HMRC expects
• HMRC-compatible submissions — submit your quarterly updates directly
• Compliance deadline reminders — never miss a quarterly submission date
• No forced upgrades — free forever for your first 3 leases

The Paid Plan: Scale Your Portfolio and Meet Matt, Your AI Assistant

You only move to our paid plan for two reasons: your portfolio grows beyond 3 leases, or you want to buy back your time.

If the free plan gives you the tools to do MTD manually, the paid plan is designed to do the heavy lifting for you. When you upgrade, you unlock Matt, our AI agent. Matt acts as your automated property assistant, taking the manual data entry out of the equation.

The bottom line? The free plan gives you a fully functional car for your first three leases. The paid plan handles the scale of a larger portfolio and hands the keys over to Matt so you can sit in the passenger seat. You get to choose what works best for your business.

Landlords didn't ask for MTD. Everyday investors shouldn't have to pay a toll just to comply with it. — The Latch Team

Why Make Compliance Free for Smaller Portfolios?

Other platforms see MTD as a revenue opportunity — a captive audience forced to buy software. We see it differently.

Landlords are already dealing with rising costs, tighter regulations, and more admin than ever. Adding a software subscription on top of that is not solving a problem for an everyday landlord. It is adding one.

We are building Latch to remove burdens, not create them. MTD is a legal requirement, not a luxury feature. The tools to meet it should be accessible.

What We Are Building

Free Plan Features (for up to 3 leases)

Everything you need to stay fully compliant:

• Digital record keeping — your books are always up to date and stored securely. No more scrambling at year-end.
• Quarterly summary reports — generate the exact summaries HMRC expects, straight from your inputted data. No spreadsheets, no manual exports.
• HMRC-compatible submissions — when the time comes, submit your quarterly updates directly. We are building toward seamless, free integration with HMRC's APIs.

Paid Plan: Matt the AI Agent

When you upgrade, Matt handles the heavy lifting:

• Up to 8 leases on Pro, 50 on Enterprise (+£1/extra) — scale your portfolio
• Automatic income and expense tracking — every rent payment, maintenance bill, and letting agent fee is read, logged, and categorised automatically
• Smart receipt processing — just upload your documents, and Matt extracts the data for your digital records

All of this sits alongside the property management tools you already use in Latch — tenant tracking, lease management, payment recording, and more.

Users First, Always

We are not building in a vacuum. Every feature we ship starts with the same question: what do landlords actually need?

We are actively listening to feedback from our early users and the wider landlord community. If there is something you need — a report format, a workflow shortcut, a way to categorise expenses that makes sense for your portfolio — we want to hear about it.

This is not lip service. We have already shipped features directly from user requests, and we will keep doing it. Our roadmap is not set in stone. It is shaped by you.

Our Mission: Stop Managing, Start Living

We started Latch because we believe landlords deserve better tools. Not bloated enterprise software. Not clunky spreadsheets.

Our mission is simple: save landlords as much time as possible so they can stop managing and start living.

MTD is just the latest example — a regulatory requirement that we are turning into an opportunity to make your life easier, not harder.

Help Us Build What You Need

We are a small, fast-moving team. That means we can ship quickly and respond to what matters to you.