Who needs to file a Self Assessment tax return for 2025-26?

The short answer

You need to file a Self Assessment return for 2025-26 if at least one of the triggers below applied between 6 April 2025 and 5 April 2026, or if HMRC has sent you a notice to file. If all your income was a salary or pension taxed through PAYE, with no gains to report and no Child Benefit charge to settle, you probably do not.

The dates for this return are:

• 5 October 2026: the deadline for telling HMRC you need to file, if you are new to Self Assessment or did not need to file for 2024-25
• 31 October 2026: paper returns
• 31 January 2027: online returns, and payment of the tax

If you already know you need to file, our guide to preparing and filing a Self Assessment return picks up from there.

Working for yourself

Sole traders

If you were self-employed and your income from it was more than £1,000 before expenses, you must file. The £1,000 is the trading allowance, and it is measured on takings, not profit. A weekend business with £1,400 of sales and £900 of costs has made only £500, but it is over the line.

Once you are past that level, HMRC expects a return even if no tax turns out to be due. Below it, you can still register by choice, which the FAQs below cover.

Business partners

Every partner in a business partnership files a personal return, whatever their share of the profit. The trading allowance does not apply to partnership income. The partnership itself also files a return.

Company directors

Being a director is not, by itself, on HMRC’s list of reasons to file for 2025-26. Many directors still need to, usually because their dividends were over £10,000 or another trigger in this article applies, and some will have received a notice to file.

If you do file, 2025-26 is the first year the return asks every director for more. Each directorship generally needs its own employment page, even for a dormant company. For each close company you must give its name and registered number, the dividends you received from it (which may be nil) and the highest percentage of its shares you held during the year.

Off-payroll workers with a student loan

If you worked through an intermediary, such as your own company, under the off-payroll working rules and you are repaying a student or postgraduate loan, you need to file.

Rental income

If you let UK property, you need a return if the rent was more than £2,500 after allowable expenses, or more than £10,000 before them. If your gross rent was £1,000 or less, the property allowance covers it and there is nothing to report. If it falls between those levels, you tell HMRC about it rather than file a return.

Joint owners each have their own £1,000 property allowance, set against their share of the rent.

Letting a furnished room in your own home is treated differently. Under Rent a Room, up to £7,500 a year is tax-free, or £3,750 each where the income is shared. You need a return only if you go over that limit.

Savings, dividends and other untaxed income

• Savings interest: more than £10,000 means a return. Interest below that can still be taxable; if HMRC has not sent you a tax calculation letter or Simple Assessment for it by 31 March 2027, you tell HMRC about it instead.
• Dividends: more than £10,000 means a return. If you had more than £500 (the 2025-26 dividend allowance) but no more than £10,000, and nothing else puts you in Self Assessment, you tell HMRC rather than file. Dividends on shares held in an ISA do not count.
• Other untaxed income: £2,500 or more from sources such as tips or commission means a return. Smaller amounts are reported to HMRC without one.

Capital gains

If you have Capital Gains Tax to pay for 2025-26, you need to report it, and for most people that means a Self Assessment return. Gains covered by the annual exempt amount, which was £3,000 for 2025-26, are tax-free.

Two separate rules sit alongside the return. If you sold a UK residential property, any tax due must be reported and paid within 60 days of completion, through HMRC’s Capital Gains Tax on UK property service; if you are in Self Assessment, the sale goes on your return as well. And if you are eligible, HMRC’s real-time Capital Gains Tax service is an alternative to a return, with a deadline of 31 December in the tax year after the sale.

The High Income Child Benefit Charge

The charge applies where you or your partner received Child Benefit and your adjusted net income was over £60,000. Adjusted net income is your total taxable income, including savings and dividends, less certain reliefs such as pension contributions and Gift Aid. The charge is 1% of the Child Benefit for every £200 of income above £60,000, so at £80,000 the whole amount is repaid. Where both partners are over the threshold, the one with the higher income pays.

You do not have to use Self Assessment for this. If you have no other reason to file, you can pay the 2025-26 charge through your PAYE tax code instead, provided you set that up on or before 31 January 2027. After that date, or if you file for another reason anyway, it goes through your return.

Income from abroad, and non-residents

If you were UK resident and owe UK tax on foreign income, such as wages for work abroad, an overseas pension or rent from property abroad, you need a return. So do people who were not UK resident but had taxable UK income. Non-residents must also report every sale of UK property or land, even where no tax is due.

If you are unsure whether you were UK resident, Linx Tax Defence’s guide to the statutory residence test explains the rules.

The less common triggers

You also need to file if any of these applied:

• you are claiming more than £2,500 in expenses, for example as an employee
• you have tax to pay on pension savings above your annual allowance, or on an unauthorised payment from a pension
• you received income from a trust or estate, other than savings or dividend income, or income and gains from an overseas company or trust are treated as yours
• you held one of these positions: minister of religion, Lloyd’s underwriter, examiner, exam moderator or invigilator, share fisher, or globally mobile employee on temporary secondment to the UK
• you want relief for a community investment, or more than £10,000 of relief under the Enterprise Investment Scheme and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme together

What no longer means a return

Until recently, a high income on its own was enough. The limit was £100,000, then rose to £150,000 for 2023-24. From 2024-25 it was removed, so someone taxed entirely through PAYE does not file just because their pay is high.

The other triggers still apply to high earners, of course. Some also choose to file so they can claim relief on pension contributions or Gift Aid that their tax code does not handle.

Filing by choice

You can file a return even when you do not have to. People do so to prove they are self-employed (for Tax-Free Childcare or Maternity Allowance, for example), to pay voluntary National Insurance contributions, or to claim tax relief on maintenance payments.

If HMRC has sent you a notice to file

A notice to file must be answered by the deadline it gives, even if none of the triggers above apply to you. If your circumstances have changed, for instance because you have stopped trading or sold your only rental property, tell HMRC as soon as you can. HMRC needs time to look at the request before 31 January, and a late request can still leave you with a penalty.

If you missed 5 October 2026

Register now. If you have been in Self Assessment before, you may need to reactivate your existing record rather than start again. HMRC says confirming a registration can take up to 10 working days, or 21 if you are abroad, and your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR) arrives by post.

HMRC will tell you the filing deadline that applies to you, but the tax for 2025-26 is still due by 31 January 2027. If you registered late and that tax is not paid in full by then, HMRC may charge a failure to notify penalty.

What Making Tax Digital for Income Tax changes

What is in force now

Since 6 April 2026, sole traders and landlords whose qualifying income for 2024-25 was over £50,000 have had to use Making Tax Digital for Income Tax. They keep digital records, send quarterly updates through compatible software (by 7 August, 7 November, 7 February and 7 May) and file their annual return through the same software by 31 January.

Even if you joined on 6 April 2026, your 2025-26 return is filed in the usual way. Making Tax Digital starts with the 2026-27 year.

What is scheduled

• 6 April 2027: people whose qualifying income for 2025-26 is over £30,000
• 6 April 2028: people whose qualifying income for 2026-27 is over £20,000
• Partnerships: later, on a timetable HMRC has not yet published

Why your 2025-26 return matters

HMRC reads each year’s return to see who crosses the next threshold, then writes to them. The 2025-26 return you file by 31 January 2027 is the one it uses for the April 2027 intake. If you are in scope and no letter comes, it is still your responsibility to sign up.

Qualifying income is your gross self-employment and property income added together, before expenses. Wages, dividends, pensions and your share of a partnership’s profit are left out. Take a landlord who also works as a self-employed consultant: £19,000 of gross rent and £13,000 of fees in 2025-26 gives qualifying income of £32,000, so they would join in April 2027 even if their combined profit is far lower. A joint owner counts only their own share of the rent.

What stays the same

You still file a tax return every year, through your software, and the payment dates of 31 January and 31 July do not move. HMRC is not giving penalty points for late quarterly updates during 2026-27, though a late return still counts. Some people are exempt, for example if they are digitally excluded, and they carry on filing ordinary returns.

HMRC’s guidance on whether and when you need to use it includes a tool for checking your own position.

Checking your own position

HMRC’s online checker asks about each of these triggers in turn and gives an answer for 2025-26. If the answer is yes, our Self Assessment service covers preparing and filing the return, and our guide to completing the return explains the steps if you are doing it yourself.