British Expats - Spouse VISA via self employed Success!

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- - Spouse VISA via self employed Success! - Financial Requirement section (https://britishexpats.com/forum/citizenship-passports-spouse-family-visas-uk-196/spouse-visa-via-self-employed-success-financial-requirement-section-853513/)

Spouse VISA via self employed Success! - Financial Requirement section

Just wanted to post some advise for others having difficulty with the financial requirement bit of the spouse Visa if your self employed. Even though we didn't use a lawyer we still had a successful application.

My partner got her VISA using the UKBA premium service, we got a decision within 2.5hours! The premium service is £1001 total so that's £400 extra on top of the normal £601 for the postal application. In my opinion it's well worth £400 to avoid 2 months of uncertainty, nail biting and hassle. Plus if you are applying close to April you might have to reapply for the next financial year if your application gets sent back.

I'm self employed so I had to provide tons of extra paperwork but it worked out ok in the end. Here's how I did it:

For the Financial Requirement section:

- Brief letter stating the nature of you self-employment (so I created a formal letter which stated my job title, stated that my income exceeds the minimum requirement, stated when I registered as self employed with HMRC and also where to find the income on the bank statements I provided)

- Evidence of the amount of tax payable, paid and unpaid for the last full financial year (I provided 3 documents here. Firstly a print out copy of the Annual self-assessment tax return to HMRC for the last financial year. Secondly I provided a Statement of Account SA302. Thirdly I got a print out of my Tax payment calculation from HMRC. You can get all of these posted to you if you call HMRC )

- Proof of registration with HMRC as self-employed (I couldn't find my original copy of this so I phoned HMRC and they sent me out a confirmation of self-employment)

- Unique tax reference number UTR (There is no document for this but the UTR number appears on the HMRC letters so that is fine)

- Personal bank statements for the same 12-month period as the tax return showing that the income from self-employment has been paid into an account in the name of the person or in the name of the person and their partner jointly – need full bank statements for each month of tax year period (I have paperless banking so I had to call my bank and request paper copies of my statement between the start and end of the last financial year)

- Evidence of ongoing self-employment through evidence of payment of Class 2 National Insurance contributions (I proved 2 documents here. Firstly call HMRC and ask for a schedule of payments for Class 2 National Insurance contributions. Secondly I went to my bank and got a authorised print out (with official bank stamp) of the class 2 National insurance payments made to HMRC from the end of the last financial year to the current date.

- Unaudited accounts for the last full financial year and an accountant’s certificate of confirmation, from an accountant who is a member of a UK Recognised Supervisory Body (as defined in the Companies Act 2006) (This was the final document I provided and tricky to get hold of if you do your own accounts. First of all this is just one letter, you can't get a certificate of confirmation from an accountant basically all you need do is insure that the accountant puts their credentials (ICAEW) and membership number at the bottom of the letter next to where they sign. I paid an accountant £150 for this letter but you must insure they are a fully qualified accountant member of the ICAEW (or other allowed body) otherwise the letter is worthless!! There are lots of qualified accountants in the UK that will be able to do this for you. Basically you need to provide them with your income statement calculations which you used to fill out your tax return from that they can draft you a letter containing these calculations and saying they confirm the calculations based on the information you provided them with)

So it took time to get all of the documents but we had a successful application. I recommend checking all pieces of information with a fine tooth-comb to insure no screw-ups.

Hope this helps.