If you are applying for a mortgage then most mortgage lenders or brokers will ask you to provide evidence of your income a part of the process of finding out how much money you can borrow. If you are just an employee this will be your last 3 payslips. If you file tax returns then they normally ask for more information, the form SA302. Up until September 2017 HMRC would provide forms SA302 … but now they don’t. Instead HMRC and the majority of lenders (those who sign up to the Council of Mortgage Lenders) have agreed that they will accept information that you or your accountants can print off and send to them. This information is your tax calculation and your tax year overview. Of course everyone still talks about getting forms SA302 even though that is rarely what they get. So how can you print your SA302s or your tax calculation and tax year overview from your online self-assessment account?
If you have access to your personal HMRC gateway and you do your tax return yourself then you can print this yourself. There are two documents you need to print your tax calculation and your tax year overview. Start by login to your personal HMRC gateway.
- For the tax calculation, click onto ‘Tax Return Options’, choose your tax year, click on the ‘view return’ option and then ‘view calculations’ and you can then print it off.
- For your tax year overview, click on to ‘view account’, then tax years and choose the year and then ‘print your tax year overview’.
If you use an accountant then what does your accountant need to send to your lender? It is exactly the same information. However, note that you will need to contact them instead of printing it yourself as (currently) HMRC’s gateway will not give you the option to print your tax calculation yourself. Your accountants will be able to send you the SA302 information, ie your tax calculation and your tax year overview.
Of course, some mortgage lenders will insist on getting HMRC to produce the forms SA302. Which is where this process might fall over – because the taxman really doesn’t like doing this. Because HMRC have an agreement with most banks that this is not needed, they really don’t like printing and posting forms SA302 out. In fact, it appears to be standard practice in the HMRC call centres to deny all knowledge or even the ability to do this! Which is clearly really frustrating at such a stressful time. However, if your lender has refused to accept the paperwork you or your accountant have sent them, then don’t despair. Ring HMRC, tell them that the lender has refused what you or your accountant has sent them and ask for SA302 for the last few years. Unless you get the worst of ‘jobsworth’ civil servants when you ring, the HMRC call centre staff are normally helpful.
What if you haven’t filed your tax return yet? – well obviously you can’t get confirmation from HMRC or your accountants until it is filed. Rather than letting this be a delay in your house buying process, make sure you get this sorted at the earliest opportunity. Also, it takes HMRC at least 72 hours to process a filed tax return and make the SA302s available.
If you are one of our clients then we can provide this information really quickly – just get in touch.
