Built by Quartax
The HMRC Health Check.
Most people who get stuck with Making Tax Digital aren't stuck on their figures. It's their HMRC record: not signed up, an income source missing, or no deadlines set. The HMRC Health Check reads your record and tells you, in plain English, what's wrong and what to do next.
Checked against HMRC guidance on
What it checks
It goes through your record in the same order HMRC needs things to be in place, and stops at the first thing that needs fixing:
- Your connection. Quartax is connected to your HMRC account, and HMRC still accepts it.
- Your National Insurance number. HMRC finds your Making Tax Digital record by it.
- Your sign-up. Whether HMRC has you signed up for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, and which income sources it lists.
- Each income source. Your property income and any self-employment: whether HMRC has set this year's quarterly deadlines for each.
- Your next update. Which quarter is due next, when, and whether you've already uploaded for it.
What it can tell you
| Result | What it usually means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| You're all set | Signed up, deadlines in place | Upload your statement and send |
| You may not need Making Tax Digital yet | Not signed up, and what you've uploaded looks under the threshold | Check with our MTD checker; keep filing Self Assessment if you're under |
| HMRC doesn't have you signed up | No MTD income sources on your record | Sign up on GOV.UK if your income is over the threshold |
| Signed up, but no deadlines yet | HMRC hasn't finished setting up your income source | Wait a few days if you've just signed up; otherwise contact HMRC |
| Bring your income sources in | HMRC lists a source we haven't saved yet | One button, and we fetch it |
| You have an update to send | A quarter's deadline has passed | Send it as soon as you can |
| Reconnect to HMRC | HMRC has ended our access, as it does from time to time | Reconnect in a couple of minutes |
Is it AI?
No, and that's deliberate. The HMRC Health Check is built on rules we wrote and test against real situations, so the same record always gets the same answer, and we can explain exactly why it said what it said. For something as important as your tax record, we think that matters more than clever wording.
We do use AI elsewhere in Quartax: to suggest a category for each transaction on your bank statement, which you then check. The security page explains exactly what we send and what we remove first.
Your data
- It only reads your record, using the permission you gave HMRC when you connected Quartax. It never changes anything at HMRC.
- It uses your National Insurance number to find your record, as every MTD product does. Your HMRC sign-in details never reach us.
- We keep a short technical note of each check's result (not your figures), so we can fix problems if something goes wrong.