Online Personal Tax Accounts are regularly useful to our clients wanting to view their State Pension Forecast, National Insurance record, Employment Income records, Self Assessment liabilities etc.
However they are now an almost essential first step for submitting an application to the Government’s Self Employed Grant scheme (SEISS). If you haven’t already got a Personal Tax Account set up, you do this at any time although we recommend you do this (and use the eligibility checker) before the grant applications open next week.
Below is a step-by-step guide to how to set up a Personal Tax Account. And you can see our separate guide to completing the rest of the Self Employed Grant Application here.
- Visit hmrc.gov.uk and select ‘HMRC services: sign in or register’
- Select ‘Create sign in details’, below the sign in button
- Enter an email address that you have immediate access to
- HMRC will then send your email a confirmation code. You need to enter this on the webpage, to confirm your email address.
- Enter your full name.
- Now to create your security details. Create a password and then a recovery word so that you can always get back into your account if you forget your password
- Then HMRC will issue your Government Gateway user ID – which is essentially your username to login with. They should email a copy of this user ID straight to your email address. Make sure you have received it, before you move on from this page, so you know you have a record of it.
- More security! Make sure that only you can sign in, by creating a way to ‘access codes’. Select one of 3 different options
- Confirm you are you! HMRC will ask some security questions. We would recommend the Passport or Multiple Choice questions rather than the P60 and payslip questions (just because they’re easier to decipher and you’re more likely to have the knowledge in your head, or your passport to hand!)
- Success!
- Finally choose how to receive further IMPORTANT correspondence from HMRC.
- Now you should be logged in, and have access to your Personal Tax Account. This is where you can make the Self Employed Grant application (from your allotted application date).
We hope this helps – as always we are more than happy to talk you through this process by telephone and sharing your computer screen if you are not confident, or you’re incurring issues. We are ‘Accountants You Can Talk To’ so please talk to us.
Best wishes and stay safe
Dean and Gina.
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