Sign up clients to MTD for Income Tax

How to onboard your clients to the MTD Income Tax in Client Management.

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Step one: Authenticate your practice

1. Within Client Management, select the Settings tab.
2. From Agent services account, select Authenticate your practice for Income Tax.
3. Select Request authentication.
4. To grant Sage permission to interact with HMRC on your behalf, select Continue. 
5. Sign in to your Government Gateway account using your Agent Services credentials. 
6. Select Grant authority. 

Step two: Obtain client authorisation

You’ll need to use your Agent Services Account to copy across an existing authorisation or create a new one.

• For existing clients: Copy authorisation from Self-Assessment
• For new clients: Request authorisation via Digital Handshake

You can’t transfer clients who aren’t set up in your Agent Services Account (ASA). HMRC sends them an authorisation code by post, which may take up to 7 days. Clients must share the code with you within 30 days. Enter the code to continue onboarding.

Step three: Enable MTD Income Tax for the client

If you haven't already, Add your new client to the software, and Assign your client to a product.

1. Open the client you want to enable for MTD.
2. Under the Products section, select Click to find out more on the MTD for Income Tax banner.
3. Make sure the client meets the criteria, then select Enable Making Tax Digital for Income Tax.

We add an Income Tax category field to each ledger account which you can view in the chart of accounts in Sage Accounting.

If you're using standard ledger accounts, we'll automatically assign the Income Tax category to your income and expense ledger accounts.

If you're using custom ledger accounts, you'll need to map these to the relevant Income Tax category from the chart of accounts.

1. From the Income Tax area in Sage Accounting, select Income Tax summary.
2. Make sure the clients National Insurance number is correct, then select Continue. 
3. Check the business details are correct. If everything is correct, select Confirm.
4. This then opens the Income Tax summary. 

As standard, submissions run in line with the tax year, but taxpayers can change this to align to the calendar year instead. 

MTD submissions are cumulative year to date, meaning each update represents the total figures from the start of the accounting period to the end of the current quarter.

Find out how to Send Income Tax quarterly updates to HMRC.