What is in the sole trader package and what does it cost?
The package is the complete set of self-employed income evidence, prepared together so every document agrees with the others, for a fixed £895 per tax year. That covers a set of unaudited accounts for your sole trader business (a profit and loss account and a balance sheet for the tax year), an accountant's certificate of confirmation signed by a qualified accountant, and your self assessment tax return prepared and filed with HMRC, with the SA302 tax calculation and tax year overview downloaded for you once HMRC has processed it. You also get a short cover note listing what each document is, because the person reading your application will not be an accountant.
The price is fixed and it is not negotiable, in either direction. We set it at a level that lets a qualified accountant do the work properly and sign their name to it, and we do not quote it lower for a "simple" year or higher for a busy one. Where the package changes is the number of years. Two tax years is £1,595 and three tax years is £2,195, and in both cases the certificate covers every year in one document. All three prices exclude VAT.
We built this as a package because people kept asking for the three parts separately, from different providers, and then discovering at the worst moment that the accounts said one thing and the tax return said another. LOYALS is a King's Cross firm of accountants and business consultants that prepares self assessment returns and personal tax for self-employed people across London and the UK, and the whole point of doing the three parts under one roof is that they cannot disagree.
What does the Home Office actually ask a self-employed sponsor for?
It asks for the tax return, the HMRC evidence behind it, the accounts, the certificate and the bank statements, all for the same financial year. The list sits in paragraph 7 of Appendix FM-SE, the specified evidence rules for family visas, and the same pattern is borrowed by other routes that need to see self-employed income. For a sole trader relying on income from the last full financial year, the core items are the annual self assessment return as filed, the Statement of Account (SA300 or SA302), evidence of the tax payable, paid and unpaid, your Unique Taxpayer Reference, proof of registration as self-employed where you have it, and business and personal bank statements covering the same twelve months. Then the accounts and the certificate. And separately, something dated within the last three months that shows the business is still trading.
Every item has to agree with every other item. The turnover in the accounts is the turnover on the tax return. The tax due on the SA302 is the tax the accounts imply. The income landing in your bank statements is the income the accounts report. A caseworker who finds the accounts saying £38,000 and the tax return saying £34,000 does not ask which is right; they ask why you filed two different numbers. That is the whole reason the pack is prepared as one job rather than assembled from three sources.
The one thing we do not prepare is the bank statements, for the obvious reason that they come from your bank. What we do is read them before we finish the accounts, so the figures we sign off are the figures a caseworker can trace to your account.
What is the accountant's certificate of confirmation, and who can sign it?
The certificate is a signed letter from the accountant who prepared the accounts, confirming that the accounts are a true reflection of the business's records for the year and that the self assessment return filed with HMRC agrees to them. It is short, it is specific to you, and it carries the accountant's name, firm and professional membership. It is not an audit opinion, and nobody is asking for one: a sole trader has no audit requirement in law, which is why the rules say unaudited accounts.
Who signs matters more than most people realise. Appendix FM-SE requires the accounts and the certificate to come from an accountant who is a member of a UK Recognised Supervisory Body as defined in the Companies Act 2006, or a member of one of the other accountancy bodies the rules list by name. A certificate from a bookkeeper, or from an "accountant" with no listed membership, does not meet the rule, and the application is refused on evidence rather than on the merits, which is a painful way to lose several months and a fee. At LOYALS the certificate is signed by a qualified accountant on our team whose membership sits on that list, and the membership details go on the letter so the caseworker can check it. If your situation involves a route other than the family route, tell us on the call and we will check the wording that route's rules use before we draft.
One year, two years or three: which package do you need?
Most applicants need one year, some need two by choice, and the three-year package is for people who are behind. The rules let a self-employed sponsor rely on the income of the last full financial year, or on the average of the last two full financial years, provided every year relied on has the complete set of evidence. If last year was strong, one year is enough. If last year was weak and the year before was strong, averaging the two can lift you over the income threshold, and that is the reason the two-year package exists rather than a way of selling you more.
Three years is a different situation. It is for the person who has been trading and earning but has not filed for two or three years, and who now needs everything up to date before they can apply. We prepare and file the late years as well as the current one, and the single certificate covers all three so the pack reads as one consistent history rather than a scramble.
Read the per-year figure and you will see the second and third years cost less than the first. That is not a discount for its own sake; the set-up work, the certificate and the cover note are done once, so the later years genuinely cost us less to add, and the price follows.
What if you have late or missing tax returns?
File them all, together, now. A self assessment return that misses the 31 January online filing deadline picks up an automatic £100 penalty, and HMRC's penalties then escalate with daily charges after three months and further percentage penalties at six and twelve months, so a year left unfiled gets more expensive the longer it sits. Against that, an application that shows a gap in filed returns for a year you were plainly trading raises a question no cover letter answers well. Filing late costs money; not filing costs the application.
For a late year we rebuild the figures from what exists: business and personal bank statements, invoices, platform statements, and HMRC's own record of anything already reported. Where a genuine record is missing we say so in the accounts rather than invent one, because the certificate is a professional statement and we sign it as such. Once the returns are filed, we ask HMRC to process them so the SA302 and tax year overview are available, and where a reasonable excuse exists for the delay we put the penalty appeal in at the same time.
How does the package work and what do we need from you?
Ten working days from the day we hold your complete records for a one-year package, fifteen for three years, and you get the delivery date in writing when you engage us. The flow below is the same for everyone, which is how we keep the price fixed.
What we need from you is mostly what you already have: twelve months of business and personal bank statements for each year, your invoices or platform income statements, receipts or a list of business expenses, your UTR and Government Gateway login or authority for us to act, and the letter or checklist that told you what to provide, so we match its wording. Send it through our secure portal, on WhatsApp, or bring it in to King's Cross. We confirm the same day that the records are complete, and the ten days run from that confirmation.
You then receive the accounts, the signed certificate, the filed return with HMRC's submission receipt, the SA302 and tax year overview, and the cover note, as PDFs and, if you want them, printed and signed originals. If a caseworker asks a question about any of it, they can ring us and we answer, which is a small thing that matters a great deal on the day.
What to do now
If you have been asked for this pack, the steps are short.
- Check which year, or years, you are relying on. Last full financial year on its own, or the average of the last two. If any year is unfiled, that year has to be filed first.
- Gather the bank statements for those years. Twelve months of business and personal statements per year, plus something recent showing you are still trading.
- Book the 15-minute call or message us. We confirm the package, the fixed price and the delivery date in writing within 24 hours.
- Send the records. The clock starts the day they are complete, and you get every document back in one consistent pack.
The price is £895 for one tax year, £1,595 for two and £2,195 for three, fixed, with nothing to add and nothing to negotiate. LOYALS is a King's Cross firm of accountants and business consultants that prepares sole trader accounts, accountant's certificates and self assessment returns for self-employed people across London and the UK, and we would rather tell you on the call that you only need the one-year package than sell you three.