The Income Record Viewer is a new service from HMRC that allows individuals to view their employment and self-employment income records for the current and previous tax years. It’s designed to help individuals check that the information held by HMRC as correct, as well as provide a convenient way to access their tax information.

To access the Income Record Viewer, individuals must have a government gateway account and be registered for self-assessment.

Once logged in, users can view their income records for the current and previous tax years, including details of their employment and self-employment income, tax paid, and National Insurance contributions. The service also allows users to print or download a summary of their income records.

The Income Record Viewer is part of HMRC’s efforts to provide individuals with more transparency and control over their tax affairs. By allowing taxpayers to easily access their income records, HMRC hopes to reduce errors and improve compliance with tax obligations.

If you log on and notice any discrepancies or errors in your records, you should contact HMRC to correct the information. It’s not an unusual occurrence!

We’d like access too!

As agents, if we’re authorised by our clients, we can access the Income Record Viewer too. We’d then have access to the following information, which would be really helpful, and much of which we can’t currently see:

• Employment income and details of employment (such as employer name and PAYE reference) for the current and previous tax years

• Self-employment income, including income from partnerships and details of the accounting period

• Details of any taxable state benefits received by the client

• Pensions received, including any tax deducted at source

• Details of tax paid, including PAYE tax, National Insurance contributions, and self-assessment payments

• Details of any tax refunds or tax owed to HMRC

• Any other relevant tax information, such as tax codes, tax estimates, and payments on account

This would be a huge step forward over the information we can currently see, and would help us manage clients’ tax affairs far more efficiently and effectively.

We’d be able to see far more information, without having to ask you to supply it!

We’d therefore like clients to grant us access to the information in your Income Record Viewer record.

What we need you to do…

This section has been updated in light of new information since it was originally posted. Please note the process for us to be authorised by clients will be instigated by us, rather than by you needing to start the process.
We’re hoping this will be easier!

Click on the HMRC video below to see a walk through of the process you’ll need to follow, which we’ve broken down here into three key steps:

STEP ONE

If you’re a personal tax client, we’ll send you an email that will ask you to confirm that you have a government gateway account. In case you don’t yet have one, we’ll include a link that will explain how to set one up.

STEP TWO

Please reply by email and confirm that you have a Gateway account and that you’re happy to give us access to the information it contains, then we’ll send you a link from the gov.uk website.

(We do NOT need your log-in details, so please keep those secure.)

STEP THREE

When you click on the link we send you, you’ll be asked to sign in to your Government Gateway using your user ID. You’ll also need to prove your identity, using two of the following:

• A valid UK Passport
• A UK photocard driving licence issued by the DVLA
• A payslip form the last 3 months or a P60 from an employer for the last tax year.
• Details from a Self Assessment Tax Return if you made one
• Details from a tax credit claim if you made one
• Information on your credit record if you have one (loans, credit cards or mortgages)

You then just need to confirm that you want to grant us access to your account.

Please note: There’s a time limit 22 days, after which the link we’ll send you expires, but by completing the process, it’ll give us the access we need.

Here’s the video that shows you exactly where you need to click and what the various screens will look like:

We’ll receive an email that confirms we’re set up and we’re good to go!

Once in place, the authority remains so unless you revoke it, or we delete ourselves from the account, so it’s a one-off process. As you can see in the screenshot above, there’s a link beneath the confirmation that enables you to remove us should you wish to do so in future.

Beware of scams!

The link that we need you to follow will come in a normal email, from Liz’s usual email address.

There is no fancy format to the email, or special address that it will come from, so please watch out for anything that looks unusual or comes from anywhere else. Similarly, as stated above, we do NOT need your log-in details so please don’t send them.

For non-clients, please be aware that similarly, your accountant will not need your log-in details at any point.

Please do not provide your personal log-in details in response to any request. If you’re asked for them, it’s likely to be a scam!

If you’re unsure what you need to do, or have any questions about why we need this access, please get in touch, but it should be quite a straightforward process, and should help us to help you more efficiently.