TapTax vs My Tax Digital
Free with no paid tier, or free with an app
My Tax Digital is the most complete genuinely free product on HMRC directory: 15 of 16 tax-return items, all three income sources, no upgrade wall anywhere. HMRC lists no mobile app against it. That one line decides most of this comparison.
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.
Most products described as free in this market are free in a shape designed to stop being free. The records are free and the filing is not. The quarterly updates are free and the final declaration is not. The plan is free until a second property, or a thirty-first invoice, or March 2028.
My Tax Digital is not shaped like that. Our pricing research in August 2026 found no paid tier at all, and HMRC grades the listing at 15 of the 16 tax-return items ready, across all three business income sources, with bridging, native record-keeping, agent access and calendar quarters. On the axes a directory can measure, it is one of the strongest free entries on the whole list.
There is one line in its listing that decides this comparison for a lot of people, and it is easy to skim past. HMRC lists no mobile app.
- My Tax Digital has no paid tier at all, as checked in August 2026. Not a capped free edition, not a trial: a free product with nothing above it.
- HMRC grades it at 15 of the 16 tax-return items ready, with only partner income from a partnership outstanding, and ready on all three income sources including foreign property.
- HMRC's directory lists no mobile app against it and records it as web browser only. Our own August 2026 research found the same.
- TapTax's honest position on completeness is mid-pack, roughly six to eight of the 16 items, with pensions income, CIS, capital gains and partnership income still to come.
- TapTax is mobile-first with open banking, AI categorisation and receipt capture, MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process. My Tax Digital is listed today.
How HMRC's own directory grades My Tax Digital
This is not our assessment. HMRC publishes a feature grid for every product on its find-MTD-software service, using its own three-state scale of ready now, in development, or not included. We scraped all 127 listings on 9 August 2026.
My Tax Digital (Free)
£0(checked August 2026)
- Free version: yes
- No mobile app listed: no
- Sole trader income: yes
- UK property income: yes
- Foreign property income: yes
- Keeps digital records: yes
15/16 tax-return items ready, 1 more in development.
HMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026. Feature flags are vendor-declared. Vendor site
No paid tier at all as checked in August 2026, so no upgrade wall and no caps. HMRC lists no mobile app and records the software type as web browser only.
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.
Read that card next to almost any paid product on the directory and the comparison is uncomfortable. Free version ready, digital record-keeping ready, bridging ready, agent software ready, HMRC Assist ready, standard and calendar update periods ready, all three income sources ready, and 15 of 16 return items ready. There are subscriptions on this list at over £300 a year that grade worse.
"No paid tier" is a different thing from "a free tier"
This distinction is worth spending a paragraph on, because it is the part a feature grid cannot show you.
A free tier is a commercial instrument. It exists to acquire you, and it is drawn deliberately so that a predictable share of users outgrow it. That is not a criticism, it is just what a free tier is for, and the caps tell you where the vendor expects the money to come from: one property, thirty invoices, three AI uses a month, free until March 2028.
My Tax Digital has nothing above it to be pushed towards, so none of that applies. There is no cap to outgrow and no renewal to diarise. If the thing you want is certainty that your tax software will still cost nothing in 2029, that is a real and rare offer.
The counterweight is the same fact seen from the other side. A product that takes no money from you has no revenue to spend on the parts of this problem that are expensive to build, and native mobile apps, open banking connections and machine categorisation are all expensive to build. The missing app is not an oversight, it is the shape of the model. Both things are true at once and you should choose knowing both.
A free tier is designed for you to outgrow. A free product has nothing for you to grow into. Work out which of those two you are actually being offered before you compare features.
The completeness cliff, and which side each product sits on
Most buyers assume anything on HMRC's directory can finish their tax return. It cannot, and the gap is far wider than the marketing suggests.
89of 127 (70%)cannot complete a single tax-return itemHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026Those products can file the four quarterly updates. They cannot complete a single one of HMRC's 16 tax-return items, which is the work of finishing the year: interest, dividends, pension income, Construction Industry Scheme deductions, capital gains, student loan, marriage allowance and the rest. If your tax life has anything in it beyond trading or rental income, a product on that side of the cliff means a second tool at year end.
Now narrow to the free products that are also on the right side of the line.
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 2026| Product | Free | Sole trader | UK property | Foreign property | Mobile app | Return items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abridge (MTD for Excel/Sheets) | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 15/16 |
| Clear Books Free | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | Android; Apple iOS | 15/16 |
| FreeAgent | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | Android; Apple iOS | 15/16 |
| My Tax Digital (Free) | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not listed | 15/16 |
| RentalBux Free | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 15/16 |
| TaxHeaven | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not listed | 15/16 |
| TaxUpdates | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not listed | 15/16 |
| SimplifyMTD | Ready now | Not included | Ready now | Ready now | Not listed | 14/16 |
| Self Assessment Direct | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Android; Apple iOS | 9/16 |
| Zoho | Ready now | Ready now | Ready now | Not included | Android; Apple iOS | 9/16 |
My Tax Digital sits at the top of that table. TapTax's own honest position on this axis is mid-pack and behind it: roughly six to eight of the 16 items are live today, with pensions income, CIS, capital gains and partnership income still to come. My Tax Digital is ahead of TapTax on return-item completeness right now, and pretending otherwise is exactly the kind of claim these pages exist to check.
- 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 NI and the High Income Child Benefit Charge. A product with none of these can file quarterly updates but cannot finish your return.
Pricing in detail, checked August 2026
| TapTax Free | TapTax Starter | TapTax Pro | My Tax Digital | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | £0 | £4.99/mo | £9.99/mo | £0 |
| Approx. annual cost | £0 | £49 | £99 | £0 |
| Paid tier above it | Starter and Pro | Pro | None | None at all |
| Free plan caps | Core MTD features | n/a | n/a | None found |
| Quarterly MTD updates | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sole trader income | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) |
| UK property | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) |
| Foreign property | Yes | Yes | Yes | Ready (HMRC grade) |
| Return items ready | 6 to 8 of 16 (our estimate) | 6 to 8 of 16 (our estimate) | 6 to 8 of 16 (our estimate) | 15 of 16 (HMRC grade) |
| Bridging from a spreadsheet | No, by design | No, by design | No, by design | Ready (HMRC grade) |
| Agent software | No | No | No | Ready (HMRC grade) |
| HMRC Assist | No | No | No | Ready (HMRC grade) |
| Mobile app | iOS and Android | iOS and Android | iOS and Android | None listed |
| Open banking import | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not listed by HMRC |
| HMRC directory status | Not listed; recognition in progress | Not listed; recognition in progress | Not listed; recognition in progress | Listed |
My Tax Digital pricing is from our own vendor research as checked in August 2026. Feature grades in its column are HMRC's, from the 9 August 2026 scrape, not the vendor's marketing. TapTax pricing is our own published pricing. The TapTax annual figures are its published annual-plan prices, £49 for Starter and £99 for Pro, rather than twelve times the monthly rate.
On price there is no argument to make and we are not going to invent one. Zero is zero, and it is zero with more return items than TapTax has today.
The line that actually decides it
56of 127 (44%)list a mobile appHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026Look across the whole directory and a structural pattern appears that is more useful than any individual product comparison. The products that give away the real obligation are overwhelmingly browser products. The products with proper phone apps overwhelmingly charge. Run HMRC's own grades through the full funnel and the overlap collapses:
3of 127 (2%)are free, on both app stores, keep digital records and cover all three income sourcesHMRC MTD for Income Tax directory, scraped 9 August 2026That gap is the reason TapTax exists in the shape it does, and My Tax Digital is the clearest illustration of the trade being made. It concedes almost nothing on tax capability. It concedes the phone entirely.
Whether that matters is not a question about software, it is a question about how your expenses arrive. If they arrive as invoices and statements you process in batches at a desk, a browser is the right tool and the app is worth nothing to you. If they arrive as a card payment at a builders' merchant, a fuel receipt in a van and a parking charge between jobs, the browser is where the work goes to be forgotten about until the quarter is nearly over.
Where My Tax Digital genuinely wins
Cost, completeness, availability and breadth, which is a strong four.
It is free with nothing above it, it grades at 15 of 16 return items against TapTax's six to eight, it is listed with HMRC today while TapTax is still going through recognition, and it covers MTD for VAT as well as Income Tax, which TapTax does not. It also offers bridging, so if your records live in a spreadsheet you can keep them there. TapTax deliberately does not do bridging.
Add agent software and HMRC Assist, neither of which TapTax has, and the honest summary is that on the directory's own axes My Tax Digital is the more capable product.
Where TapTax fits better
One place, and it is the place the whole year's work actually happens.
TapTax is built so the quarterly update is already done by the time the deadline arrives. Open banking pulls transactions in as they occur, AI categorisation proposes the treatment, the camera captures receipts at the counter, and CSV import with presets for 16 UK banks covers the accounts a feed does not reach. The submission becomes a review rather than an evening of data entry. A browser product with no bank feed asks you to be the import mechanism, four times a year, on a deadline.
The free tier is also not capped by business or property count, and it has no end date. If you want to test that shape against a browser workflow, both cost nothing to try.
Before you choose either, it is worth knowing your numbers. The sole trader tax calculator covers the trading side including Class 4 NIC, and the rental income calculator applies the finance-cost restriction that limits mortgage interest relief to a 20% credit.
Who should choose which
Wants the completest free return and works at a computer. My Tax Digital, comfortably. 15 of 16 items, all three income sources, no cap, no expiry, listed today. That is a straightforward recommendation and we would rather make it than talk around it.
Also has MTD for VAT to deal with. My Tax Digital, which covers both regimes. TapTax is MTD for Income Tax only.
Wants an accountant in the same system. My Tax Digital is graded ready on agent software. TapTax is not.
Does the admin on a phone, between jobs. TapTax. HMRC lists no app for My Tax Digital and records it as browser only, and no amount of return-item completeness fixes a workflow you never sit down to do.
Wants transactions to arrive by themselves. TapTax, for open banking and AI categorisation. This is the difference the directory cannot grade, because HMRC does not measure it.
Has a return with pensions, capital gains or partnership income in it. My Tax Digital today. TapTax is at roughly six to eight of 16 and those items are among the ones still closing.
Must file a live submission this week. My Tax Digital, or another listed product. TapTax's recognition is in progress and we will not tell you otherwise.
The bottom line
My Tax Digital is the strongest argument in the market that MTD compliance should cost nothing at all, and unlike most free offers, its directory grades back the claim up rather than quietly contradicting it. Free with no tier above it, 15 of 16 return items, all three income sources, VAT as well as Income Tax, listed today. If you are happy in a browser, take it.
TapTax is for the case it does not cover: doing the whole year from a phone, with the bank feed and the categorisation doing the work in the background so the quarterly update is a two-minute review. On completeness we are behind, and we are MTD-compatible and going through HMRC's recognition process rather than listed.
Choose from the data rather than the marketing. Every product on HMRC's list, with its real grades, is in the MTD software directory, and we wrote up the whole picture in our analysis of all 127 HMRC-listed MTD tools.
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