Old foreign bank account cannot be accessed - interest income is unknown

Taxpayers should declare interest income from foreign bank accounts to HMRC. However, if the account is very old (before internet banking), and has not been used for many years, sometimes it is not possible to find out what the interest income is, or even the balance. This is because the bank does not allow you to apply for internet banking unless you have a local address and local ID card, and so on. That is, the bank account cannot be accessed at all. What should someone do in this case? Is it sufficient to just declare the account name and number to HMRC? Thank you.

Hi newspaper,
As you cannot access the account you have no means to obtain the funds. you would treat this as income you are unable to transfer.
Thank you. 



 

Hi HMRC Admin25, My situation is similar to the user "newspaper". If I treat the unknown interest income as "income you are unable to transfer", do I need to report this income to HMRC? If yes, since the income amount is unknown, how can I report to the HMRC?

Hi,

If you cannot access it in any way then you would not need to report it. You should contact the bank in writing though if you still have the account number and sort code as they should still be able to inform you of any interest or advise you to to reset information to access it.

Thank you.