שומת מס הכנסה – הצהרת רואה חשבון

To grant a loan, a bank must form an opinion regarding the borrower's ability to repay the loan. To this end, the bank inquires about the borrower's income. For an employee, this matter is relatively simple. For a self-employed individual, the matter is a bit more complicated. Different banks employ different methods to assess the income of a self-employed individual. In all banks, the self-employed individual's income is determined by a combination of the last tax assessment (or sometimes two last assessments) along with the accountant's declarations regarding income from the last assessment up to the day of the mortgage application. 

Example of an income tax assessment

The assessment above shows the total income of each spouse, tax payments, and net income. Dividing the annual net income by 12 (the number of months) gives the monthly income for the tax year. 

Since the assessment pertains to a period that has already concluded, self-employed individuals are also required to provide accountant statements for the period from the last assessment until today. To the misfortune of accountants and private mortgage advisors, each bank requests the accountant statement on a different form, even though the content is quite similar. 

Sometimes the blue tax assessment sent by mail to a self-employed person is lost. In such a case, the tax advisor or accountant can issue a tax assessment from the Tax Authority's computer. The tax assessment produced independently will be signed by the accountant or tax advisor with a "certified true copy" approval. Such a tax assessment looks like this:

The accounting forms of the various banks