An SA302 is HMRC's tax calculation for a Self Assessment year — the document mortgage lenders ask self-employed applicants for instead of a payslip. You get it either from your HMRC personal tax account or from the software you used to file, but only once your return has been processed.
What an SA302 actually is
When you file a Self Assessment return, HMRC calculates the tax due based on the income and expenses you declared. That calculation — covering your total income, allowances and the resulting tax bill for the year — is the SA302. According to gov.uk's SA302 guidance, it's available for the last 4 tax years through your personal tax account, and it's most commonly requested by mortgage lenders as evidence of income for someone who doesn't have payslips to show instead.
It isn't proof that you paid the tax it calculates — just proof of what HMRC assessed you as owing. That distinction matters for the next section, and it's the reason lenders rarely accept an SA302 without its companion document.
SA302 vs Tax Year Overview — why lenders ask for both
Most mortgage lenders don't accept an SA302 on its own. They pair it with a Tax Year Overview, a separate HMRC document confirming what you actually paid for that year. The SA302 tells a lender "this is what HMRC says you earned and owed"; the Tax Year Overview tells them "this is what was actually settled." Together they answer both halves of "can this person cover a mortgage" — declared income, and a track record of paying what was due on it.
Your Tax Year Overview is available through your HMRC personal tax account regardless of what software you used to file your return, which makes it the more universally accessible of the two documents if your accounting software doesn't produce an SA302-equivalent on its own.
Getting your SA302 from your personal tax account
- Sign in to your HMRC personal tax account.
- Go to the Self Assessment section.
- Select "More details about your Self Assessment returns and payments."
- From there you can view and print your tax calculations for the years available.
One timing detail catches people out: you can't print your documents until 72 hours after you submitted your tax return. If you've just filed and need an SA302 urgently for a mortgage application, that 3-day wait is unavoidable through this route — file with enough runway before a lender's deadline rather than assuming same-day access.
Getting your SA302 if you filed through software
If you used commercial software (including ac-co, or any other filing tool) rather than HMRC's own online service, gov.uk's guidance points you back to that software to retrieve the equivalent document — it notes the document "may have an alternative name in the software, such as 'tax computation.'" If you have trouble locating or printing it, gov.uk's advice is to contact your software provider directly rather than HMRC, since HMRC doesn't hold a separately printable SA302 for returns filed this way in the same format as its own portal produces. Your Tax Year Overview, by contrast, is still retrievable from your HMRC personal tax account either way, since it reflects what HMRC's own systems recorded as paid.
If your accountant filed your return
If your accountant filed your return using commercial software rather than HMRC's own online service, gov.uk is explicit that you need to go through that software to print the tax calculation — HMRC's site won't have a separate printable copy in its own format for a return filed this way. The Tax Year Overview is the exception: you can still print that from your HMRC personal tax account regardless of whether you or your accountant filed the return, because it reflects what HMRC's own systems recorded, not the software used to submit it.
In practice this means: ask your accountant for the tax calculation (they may already send it as part of their filing pack), and pull the Tax Year Overview yourself from your personal tax account rather than waiting on them for that half of the pair.
Why lenders ask for this specifically
Gov.uk frames the whole document pair around one scenario: "you might be asked for these documents as evidence of your income, for example if you're applying for a mortgage and you're self-employed." Someone employed under PAYE has payslips and a P60 a lender can check directly against HMRC records; a self-employed applicant's income is whatever they declared on their Self Assessment return, so the SA302 and Tax Year Overview are the closest equivalent — one showing HMRC's calculation of that income, the other confirming what was actually paid on it.
If you're struggling to get either document
HMRC's Self Assessment contact service can help if you can't access your tax calculation or Tax Year Overview through either the personal tax account or your software provider — gov.uk's own guidance says simply "you can contact HMRC if you have any problems getting the documents." This is a fallback rather than a first step: the two routes above (personal tax account, or the software you filed with) are where the documents actually live, and contacting HMRC directly is for when neither of those has worked, not a shortcut around the 72-hour wait.
A quick checklist before you apply for a mortgage
- Confirm with your lender exactly how many tax years of income they want evidenced before you start pulling documents — this varies by lender, not by HMRC rule.
- File your Self Assessment return with enough lead time to clear the 72-hour print wait before any lender deadline.
- Pull both the SA302 (or your software's tax computation) and the matching Tax Year Overview for each year requested — lenders commonly ask for the pair rather than either document alone.
- If a figure looks wrong, check it against the return you actually submitted before raising it with your lender — the SA302 is a direct output of what was filed, not a separate HMRC judgement call.
- If you amend a return after your lender has already seen an SA302, expect them to ask for an updated copy — the document reflects the return as it currently stands with HMRC, not the version you first submitted.
How ac-co does this
Once your return has been filed through ac-co, your tax calculation and the underlying figures stay attached to that filing in your account, so retrieving what you filed doesn't mean digging back through HMRC's site months later. ac-co doesn't change the 72-hour HMRC processing window — that's HMRC's own system, not ours — but it does mean the calculation you see is consistent with what was actually submitted, since it's the same figures rather than a re-entered summary. For the matching Tax Year Overview, you'll still go to your HMRC personal tax account, since that document reflects HMRC's own payment records rather than anything a filing tool holds.
Related reading
- Self assessment deadline 2026/27 — the return has to exist before an SA302 can.
- Self assessment late filing penalty — what happens if the return behind your SA302 was late.
- How to find your UTR number — needed before you can file, and therefore before an SA302 exists.