TapTax vs GetGround
Free filing, funded by something else
GetGround gives MTD filing away at £0 and makes its money incorporating landlords into limited companies. That is a real free offer with a real strategy behind it, and both halves are worth understanding before you pick it.
Estimate your self-employed tax in seconds
See what you would owe for the year, then file the real figures with TapTax in a couple of taps.
Total turnover before expenses
Under £1,000 we use the trading allowance automatically
Estimated tax bill
£6,872
15.3% effective rate for 2026/27
- Income tax
- £5,286
- Class 4 NI
- £1,586
Take-home pay
£32,128
after tax, NI and expenses
This is an estimate using HMRC-confirmed rates for 2026/27, not your official tax calculation. TapTax is MTD-compatible, so you can connect to HMRC and file the real figures in a couple of taps.
Free MTD software is usually free for a reason, and the reason is usually the interesting part. A bank gives it away to win the current account. An accountancy firm gives it away to sell you an accountant. A bookkeeping product gives away the records and charges for the submission.
GetGround gives away the whole filing and makes its money turning landlords into limited companies. Its paid product is company formation and ongoing administration for property SPVs, at around £48 a month as checked in August 2026. Against that, the cost of running a free MTD tool is a marketing line item.
This is one of the more coherent free strategies in the market, and it produces a genuinely free product with a genuinely narrow scope. Both of those need saying.
- GetGround includes MTD for Income Tax filing in its free plan at £0, with no card and no expiry, as checked in August 2026.
- Its paid business is property SPV formation and administration at around £48 a month, which is what funds the free filing.
- HMRC grades GetGround at 0 of the 16 tax-return items, and unusually it has none registered as in development either.
- It covers UK property income only. Sole trader and foreign property are both graded not included.
- HMRC records no mobile app for GetGround, so it is a browser product. TapTax ships on iOS and Android.
How HMRC's directory grades GetGround
We scraped all 127 listings on HMRC's find-MTD-software service on 9 August 2026. These are HMRC's grades, not ours.
GetGround
£0 for MTD filing(checked August 2026)
- Free version: yes
- No mobile app listed: no
- Sole trader income: no
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: no
- Keeps digital records: yes
0/16 tax-return items ready.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
Genuinely free filing with open-banking import, categorisation and receipts. UK property income only. The paid product is SPV company formation and administration at around £48 a month, which is a different service, not an MTD upgrade.
HMRC lists what each vendor declares. Feature flags, mobile-app support in particular, are vendor claims rather than verified facts, and listings change. Check with the vendor before you buy. Data: HMRC find-MTD-software service (tax.service.gov.uk), scraped 9 August 2026.
The free version grade is the one to trust here, because it is the one most often misleading elsewhere.
31of 127 (24%)list a free versionHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026Plenty of those free listings are free at the record-keeping stage and charge at the submission, or require a bank account, or expire. GetGround's is not one of those. As far as we can verify from its own materials in August 2026, the quarterly updates and the year-end obligation are in the free plan, permanently, without a card. Our genuinely free MTD software page works through the five ways free is usually not free, and GetGround avoids all of them.
What it does not avoid is the completeness question.
Zero ready and zero in development
- Tax-return items (MTD ITSA)
- The 16 categories HMRC grades separately on its software directory, covering everything outside your quarterly business updates: UK interest, employment (PAYE), UK dividends, state and private pension income, partnership income, foreign dividends and interest, pension contributions, Construction Industry Scheme, charitable giving, capital gains, student loan, marriage allowance, voluntary Class 2 National Insurance and the High Income Child Benefit Charge. A product graded at zero can still file quarterly updates. It cannot complete those items.
GetGround is graded ready on none of them. That is the normal position on this directory rather than an unusual one.
89of 127 (70%)cannot complete a single tax-return itemHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026The unusual part is the second column. GetGround has not registered a single item as in development either.
That distinction is the fairest thing this dataset offers, and it deserves more weight than it usually gets. Two products can show an identical zero in the ready column and be in completely different places. Lendlord has registered all 16 items as in development and Hammock has registered 15, which is a vendor telling HMRC it intends to complete your return. GetGround has registered none, alongside both Landlord Studio listings. That is a vendor telling HMRC, in the only formal channel available, that completing the tax return is not on its roadmap for the 2026-27 return.
98of 127 (77%)carry at least one "in development" promiseHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026In development is intent rather than capability, carries no date, and should never decide a purchase on its own. But an empty in-development column is information, and here it is consistent with the business model. GetGround is not trying to be your tax software. It is trying to be the first useful thing a landlord meets on the way to incorporating.
The practical consequence is simple. If your tax year contains a salary, some dividends, a pension, a student loan or a capital gain, GetGround will file your rental quarters and you will finish the return somewhere else.
The free-but-narrow pattern
19of 127 (15%)list a free version but cannot complete a single return itemHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026That figure is the honest frame for GetGround. Free and quarterly-only is a large, useful category, and it is not the same product as free and complete.
10of 127 (8%)list a free version AND have 9 or more of the 16 return items readyHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026If you want free and complete, that smaller group is where to look, and the standouts in it are web products: My Tax Digital, TaxHeaven's Angel tier and Clear Books Free, all £0 and all graded on 15 of the 16 items in August 2026. GetGround competes on being free, not on being complete.
Free is the easiest thing to verify in this market and the least useful thing to decide on. Scope is harder to check and it is what actually determines whether you file once or twice.
The company question, stated plainly
GetGround's paid business is incorporating landlords into special purpose vehicles, which is a legitimate and sometimes very sensible structure for a leveraged portfolio, largely because company-held property is not subject to the finance-cost restriction that limits personal landlords to a 20% credit on mortgage interest.
It is worth being precise about how that interacts with the software, because it is easy to get muddled.
MTD for Income Tax applies to individuals with self-employment or property income. Property held inside a limited company is dealt with through corporation tax and company accounts instead, and does not go through MTD for Income Tax at all. So GetGround's free MTD product serves landlords holding personally, while its paid service moves people to a structure where MTD for Income Tax stops applying to that income.
That is not a trap and it is not hidden. It does mean the free tool and the paid service are aimed at two different states of the same customer, and you should expect the conversation. Whether incorporating is right for you is a question for an accountant, and the numbers usually turn on the finance-cost restriction. The rental income tax calculator applies that restriction, which is a reasonable place to start before anyone sells you a structure.
Pricing and scope, checked August 2026
| TapTax Free | TapTax Pro | GetGround free plan | GetGround SPV service | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | £0 | £9.99/mo | £0 | Around £48/mo |
| What it is | MTD filing app | MTD filing app | MTD filing | Company formation and admin |
| MTD filing included | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not the product |
| Sole trader income | Yes | Yes | Not included (HMRC grade) | n/a |
| UK property | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) | n/a |
| Foreign property | Yes | Yes | Not included (HMRC grade) | n/a |
| Return items ready | 6 to 8 of 16 | 6 to 8 of 16 | 0 of 16, none in development | n/a |
| Mobile app | iOS and Android | iOS and Android | None recorded by HMRC | n/a |
| HMRC directory status | Not listed; recognition in progress | Not listed; recognition in progress | Listed | n/a |
GetGround prices are from our pricing research as checked in August 2026. Feature grades in the GetGround column are HMRC's, from the 9 August 2026 scrape. TapTax pricing is our own published pricing.
Note what the table cannot do, which is compare £0 with £0 on price. Both products file for nothing. Every real difference here is scope.
Where GetGround genuinely wins
It is free and it is listed. That combination is worth a lot right now, and TapTax cannot match the listed half of it.
It is free without a catch you have to read for. No card, no property cap, no end date, no bank account requirement, no metering. Very few free tiers in this market survive that list intact.
It automates the boring part. Open-banking import, categorisation and receipt capture are in the free plan rather than reserved for a paid tier, which is more than several paid products manage.
And if incorporation is genuinely on your horizon, having the software and the formation service in one place is a real convenience rather than a marketing one.
Where TapTax fits better
Anything other than UK rent. GetGround is graded not included on sole trader and foreign property income. TapTax covers all three sources. Only 59 of 127 (46%) listed products are graded ready on all three, so it is a scarce combination in the market generally.
Filing from a phone. HMRC records no mobile app for GetGround. Across the whole directory, 49 of 127 (39%) list apps on both iOS and Android, and the free ones are overwhelmingly web-only. TapTax ships on both.
More of the return, today. TapTax is mid-pack at roughly six to eight of the 16 items, with interest, dividends, charitable giving, the High Income Child Benefit Charge and voluntary Class 2 National Insurance among the ones handled, and pensions income, Construction Industry Scheme, capital gains and partnership income not there yet. Mid-pack against zero is the honest framing, and mid-pack is not the top of the directory either.
Independence from a structuring pitch. If you have no interest in incorporating, a product whose commercial model depends on it is worth noticing, even when the software is genuinely free.
Who should choose which
UK rental income only, browser is fine, budget is zero. GetGround, and it is a strong answer. Listed today, free with no catch, and it does the quarterly job.
Rental income plus a trade, or a property abroad. TapTax. GetGround cannot report either source.
You want to file from your phone at £0. TapTax. The free listed products are almost all web-only.
A return with dividends, pensions, employment income or capital gains. Neither of these finishes it, and GetGround has nothing registered in development. Look at the free-and-complete group instead: My Tax Digital, TaxHeaven Angel and Clear Books Free are all £0 with 15 of 16 items, per our analysis of all 127 HMRC-listed tools.
Seriously considering an SPV. GetGround, but take the tax advice from someone who is not selling the structure.
Filing a live submission this month. GetGround is listed. TapTax is MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process.
The bottom line
GetGround is one of the few products in this market where free means free, and the reason it can afford that is clearly signposted rather than hidden. For a landlord with UK rental income and nothing else, working in a browser, it is a good and genuinely costless answer.
What it is not is a tax product. Zero of the 16 return items ready and zero in development is a settled position rather than a work in progress, and it means the return finishes somewhere else the moment your affairs get more interesting than rent.
TapTax competes on scope rather than on price, since both are free at the point of filing: all three income sources, iOS and Android, and roughly six to eight of the 16 return items today. The caveat we put on every page still stands, and it is a real one here: TapTax is MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process, while GetGround is listed today.
Check GetGround, and every other listed product, against the live grades on the MTD software directory. TapTax has no row there yet.
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TapTax connects to your bank, categorises expenses automatically and submits quarterly updates to HMRC. Free plan, no card required.