Mortgage Broker Q&A; what’s an SA302 or Tax Year Overview, how do I get them, and what are they for?
Author: Andy Bedford » Publish Date: 12 July 2023
If you’re reading this article, a mortgage broker or lender has likely requested several years of SA302s and Tax Year Overviews from you as part of the documents required for an application.
An SA302 may be called a tax calculation or computation. It’s an abbreviated form of the complete tax return, showing the profits broken down into elements, like income from salary in paid employment or from UK land and property.
It clearly illustrates total profit by type and the tax owing after allowances; without including laborious details that went into the calculations of profits.
The tax year overview, on the other hand, is an accounting of balances owed. It shows your tax position as liabilities owed to HRMC, upcoming payments and penalties for late or overdue payments and how much of any bill is still due.
So you must provide both sets of documents where requested, as one evidences your income, the other your tax owing and payment history.
The process to get an SA302 depends on how you submit self-assessment returns.
How to get an SA302 and Tax Year Overview if you use an accountant or file postal self-assessment returns
If you use an accountant or file by post, you may not have access to HMRC online, which is usually the quickest way to get these documents. If you have never accessed your self-assessment returns via HMRC online, you should call HMRC in the first instance.
The telephone system provided by HRMC recognises the term SA302 and will generate and post these to you automatically with tax year overviews.
But the postal SA302s and tax year overviews can take up to two weeks to arrive (excluding any strike actions or seasonal delays).
So you should also contact your accountant and see if they can provide them faster. Most accountants’ software can generate something equivalent to SA302s, acceptable to most lenders, and accountants should be able to download tax year overviews from HRMC directly.
How to get an SA302 and tax year overviews if you submit self-assessment returns online
You can view and print up to 4 years of tax calculations using the steps below.
To download the SA302s
- Log in to your online account at https://www.gov.uk/log-in-register-hmrc-online-services. *
- You arrive at a splash page with several options below your name and tax reference number. Select ‘self assessment’.
- Select the link titled ‘view your payments’
- Follow the sidebar link titled ‘tax return options’ (at the bottom of the page for mobile users).
- Choose the year from the drop-down menu and click ‘Go’.
- Select the button titled ‘view return’.
- Follow the link ‘view calculation’ from the sidebar navigation menu (at the bottom of the page for mobile users).
- Follow the link ‘view and print your calculation’ at the bottom of the page.
- Select the button titled ‘Print your full calculation’ at the bottom of the page.
- Change the printer setting to “save as PDF”.
- Save the file somewhere on your machine.
- Use the back button on your browser to return to the tax return options page, and repeat the process to download three full years (or as many as you have, if less).
To download the tax year overviews
- Log in to your online account at https://www.gov.uk/log-in-register-hmrc-online-services. *
- You arrive at a splash page with several options below your name and tax reference number. Select ‘self assessment’.
- Select the link titled ‘view your payments’.
- Select ‘tax years’ from the sidebar-navigation menu (at the bottom of the page for mobile users).
- Choose the year from the drop-down menu and click ‘Go’.
- Follow the link ‘print your Tax Year Overview’.
- Change the printer setting to “save as PDF”.
- Save the file somewhere on your machine.
- select cancel from the print menu, and repeat the process for the remaining tax year overviews.
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