Making Tax Digital for childminders: your date, your records, and the 10% that goes

Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is already live for sole traders with qualifying income over £50,000. It reaches over £30,000 on 6 April 2027 and over £20,000 on 6 April 2028. The figure tested is turnover before expenses, not profit, so a childminder whose fees add up to £24,000 a year is outside it and one taking £31,000 and spending half of that on food, trips and household costs is inside it.

Which April applies to you

Your start date comes from a return you have already sent. HMRC reads qualifying income off the previous year but one, so the decision is made before the year starts rather than during it.

The 2026 to 2027 year is the one running now, and it is the year that decides whether the April 2028 threshold catches you. Qualifying income is your self-employment turnover plus any property income, added together before any expenses come off. Funded hours paid by the local authority are income like any other.

One thing worth knowing if you are near the top threshold: from September 2026 HMRC began signing people up itself where its records show qualifying income over £50,000 in 2024 to 2025 and they had not signed up on their own.

The 10% wear and tear deduction, and what replaces it

This is the change that matters most to childminders, and it is the reason the sector has been loud about MTD rather than mildly inconvenienced by it.

The long-standing arrangement let a childminder claim 10% of income from caring for children in their own home for wear and tear, without itemising anything. HMRC’s current guidance keeps that for childminders outside MTD and removes it for those inside: once you are in Making Tax Digital you claim the actual amount spent on buying, repairing or replacing household items and furniture, apportioned to business use. The Business Income Manual was updated in March 2026 to say the same thing, pointing MTD childminders at the ordinary principles rather than the flat percentage.

In practice that turns one line on a return into a year of receipts and a method for working out the business share of a sofa, a carpet or a washing machine. Coram PACEY surveyed more than 4,800 childminders about it: 53% said they intend to leave the workforce over the removal of the allowance, and only 9% felt they had been given enough lead-in time. PACEY and the other childminding organisations are still asking HMRC to keep the allowance, and HMRC has said it will review the impact of the move to actual costs, so this may yet shift. Plan for the rule as it stands.

What a digital record actually has to contain

Less than most people fear, and more often than they are used to. Each entry is a few fields, kept as you go rather than reconstructed in January.

• Income: the date received, the amount, and where it came from. Private fees, funded hours and any grant are separate sources, not one lump.
• Expenses: the date, the amount, the category, and the business proportion where the thing is shared with your household.
• Your workings: how you arrived at an apportionment. The percentage itself is not the record; the note explaining how you got to it is what you produce if HMRC asks.

Quarterly updates are reports, not payments. Four of them a year, each a cumulative total of what you have recorded, then a final declaration after the year ends. The dates tax is due do not change because you joined MTD.

Why this lands harder on childminders than on most sole traders

Because the starting point is paper. In the same PACEY survey, 68% of childminders said they keep their records and accounts entirely on paper. A plumber moving to quarterly digital updates is changing software. A childminder with a cash book and a shoebox is changing how the business records anything at all, in the same period as a new inspection framework, and mostly during the children’s nap.

What to do in the next month

1. Find your turnover figure for 2025 to 2026. Not profit. If it cleared £30,000 you are in from April 2027 and you have one tax year to prepare.
2. Start recording digitally now, in anything. A spreadsheet counts while you are getting into the habit. What has to be digital by your start date is the record itself; what has to be software is the thing that files the quarterly update.
3. Keep receipts for household items from today. The 10% shortcut disappears on the day you enter MTD, and the actual-cost claim that replaces it can only be built from receipts you already have.
4. Write down your apportionment method once. How you split electricity, food and furniture, and why. Then reuse it every quarter instead of re-deciding it.

What BeehiveKin does and does not do here

Plainly: BeehiveKin is not accounts software and will not file a quarterly update for you. It holds the childcare side of the record, the contracts, the consents, the register and the learning journal, and invoicing is on its roadmap rather than in it today. Anybody telling you their childminding app makes you MTD-compliant is selling you something it cannot do by itself; what you need for MTD is a digital record of income and expenses and software that can send it to HMRC.

Where an accurate register does help is the income half. Hours attended are what the fees are built from, and a register that records when a child actually arrived is the difference between invoicing from evidence and invoicing from memory.

This is a summary of published guidance, not tax advice, and childminding expenses have more edge cases than one article can hold. Check anything that affects what you claim with an accountant who knows childminding.

The sources, so you can check

• Claiming expenses and keeping records if you’re a childminder is the GOV.UK page that splits the 10% rule by whether you are in MTD.
• BIM52751, care providers: childminders: expenses is HMRC’s own manual, updated in March 2026.
• Reducing the mandation threshold from £30,000 to £20,000 confirms the April 2028 phase.
• Coram PACEY on the survey of 4,800 childminders, and CYP Now’s report on it.