Mortgage Reference For Self-employed Income

Getting a mortgage reference is hard enough but if you are self-employed you enter a whole new world of problems. Whereas an accountant’s mortgage reference might once have been enough, you are now likely to be asked to obtain form SA302 from HMRC. And since the financial crash the new government regulations introduced have made things harder for people running their own businesses to prove their income level to the satisfaction of their bank or building society. Most lenders now require evidence from HMRC in the form of a tax calculation (form SA302) which is not routinely issued to taxpayers unless they request it. You can ring HMRC and get one send to you but it comes in the post after a week or two’s delay and you may have to wait on the phone for an hour to speak to someone who can help.
A registered agent such as HFM can get through to HMRC much more quickly and we can often persuade them to fax the form to us if we are the registered agents but it can still  be a struggle to get things moving quickly. In 2014 HMRC offered a solution which allowed agents to print off the statements from the agent section of the HMRC website. All well and good except it turns out that only works if you use HMRC software for filing returns which only very small firms tend to do. It all certainly takes longer than simply providing a mortgage reference.
So we are glad to help if you are an HFM client and we may be able to speed up the mortgage reference for you, but it may still take some time to get the SA302 so please be patient with us. That also explains why we have to charge for something that sounds like it ought to be so simple!