BigW72

My wife and I are experiencing the same: the mortgage provider queried a discrepancy between my wife's SA302 and tax year overview for FY23. After many hours on the phone to HMRC they confirmed that they have (by July 2024) not yet processed her FY23 self-assessment return. They offered to send a letter by post confirming that "within two weeks", and it arrived in just over a week. We forwarded the letter to the mortgage provider but they rejected it and said that they would not take my wife's income into account for the mortgage application until we provide a matching SA302 and tax year overview. Some days later another letter arrived with her processed return, and a small amount due. Mind-bogglingly HMRC also added a penalty and interest for "late payment" - we will dispute that, of course. They also said that it will take "about two weeks" for the system to be updated to reflect the processed return. Just over a week later, the tax year overview has been updated but still does not match the SA302. This morning my wife spoke to HMRC again and they confirmed that there is a problem with their online system, that her affairs are in order, and that they will send a matching SA302 and tax year overview in the post within, yes, two weeks. This has now caused a delay of more than a month to our mortgage application, which is the only thing preventing exchanging contracts. In the meantime we were notified by our solicitors that the seller wants to set a deadline for exchanging at the end of the week, and we face an increased selling price (or worse) in the very likely event that we cannot get our mortgage approved in time. A further challenge is that we also only have a few days to meet the conditions set by the mortgage provider, after which we will have to re-apply, leading to more delays and almost certain derailment of our purchase. Since mortgage providers rigidly insist on information provided by HMRC, HMRC has a duty towards taxpayers to provide this information timeously and accurately. In cases where it is not able to, they should engage directly and individually with mortgage providers to resolve individual issues to prevent harming taxpayers. We now risk losing the house we want to buy directly because of HMRC failures, and that is not right.