GoSimpleTax is a well-established, low-cost tool for filing a Self Assessment tax return once a year — you can build the whole return for free and only pay to submit. Ledgers is transaction-led accounting that owns your general ledger all year and is built ground-up for MTD for Income Tax, where a single annual return becomes four quarterly updates plus a final declaration. If your only job is to file one SA return, GoSimpleTax is hard to beat on price. If MTD-ITSA is coming for you and you want your books always current, that's Ledgers' territory. Here's an honest breakdown of both.
GoSimpleTax's individual plan is £69.99 per tax year (subscription) and you can enter everything and see your estimated bill for free — you only pay when you press submit to HMRC. For someone with a single, straightforward SA100 return, that pay-per-return model is genuinely cheaper than carrying a monthly accounting subscription all year.
GoSimpleTax has been filing Self Assessment returns for years, is fully HMRC-recognised, runs hundreds of validation checks, and is backed by a UK support team that includes former HMRC staff. It has a long public review track record. Ledgers is the newer, transaction-led challenger — GoSimpleTax has the mileage on annual filing.
GoSimpleTax walks you box-by-box through the SA forms, carries prior-year details forward, and flags deductible expenses and reliefs you might have missed as you type. If you think in terms of 'fill in my tax return' rather than 'keep my books,' that form-led guidance is reassuring and effective.
GoSimpleTax covers residency (SA109) and partnership (SA800) returns, and suits pensioners, company directors and non-residents filing UK income. Ledgers is deliberately focused on the sole-trader and landlord MTD-ITSA wedge, so those specialist return types sit outside our core scope today.
Ledgers is transaction-led: your bank feed flows in, every transaction is categorised into a real double-entry general ledger, and the tax figures fall out of the books. GoSimpleTax is fundamentally return-entry software — for MTD-ITSA record-keeping it now points users to a separate product (Coconut) for bank feeds and quarterly updates. Ledgers is one system that keeps the books and produces the filing.
From April 2026 (income over £50k) MTD for Income Tax turns one SA return into four cumulative quarterly updates plus a final declaration. Ledgers is designed around that rhythm — always-current books mean each quarter's numbers are ready, not reconstructed. GoSimpleTax's heritage is the once-a-year return; its MTD-ITSA answer is delivered through a partner product rather than its core tool.
Every number in Ledgers is traceable back to the transaction and journal that produced it — you approve the edges rather than trust a black box. There's a genuine free tier and a suite of free tools (tax estimators, deadline and threshold checkers) with no card required, so you can start before you commit. GoSimpleTax is free to build a return but charges per submission.
Ledgers treats a property business as a first-class source: per-property tracking, cash basis by default, the Section 24 basic-rate finance-cost reducer, and all your UK rentals rolled into the one UK property business MTD expects. GoSimpleTax reports property income on the return well, but it's summarising figures for a filing rather than running your property books throughout the year.
Pick GoSimpleTax if your need is narrow and annual: one Self Assessment return, filed cheaply, with friendly box-by-box guidance and strong support — its pay-only-to-submit model and low per-return price are genuinely excellent value, and it handles residency and partnership returns Ledgers doesn't. Pick Ledgers if you want your books kept, not just your return filed — especially with MTD for Income Tax landing from April 2026, which replaces the single annual return with four quarterly updates and a final declaration. Ledgers owns your general ledger year-round, is transaction-led, gives you glass-box traceability and a free tier to start, and treats sole-trader and landlord accounting as an ongoing system rather than a once-a-year form. Roughly: GoSimpleTax is the best-value way to file a return; Ledgers is the best way to run the books that produce it under MTD-ITSA.
See also: Making Tax Digital for Income Tax · Check your MTD status · For landlords
Comparison based on publicly available information as at mid-2026; check each provider's site for current features and pricing.