Problem with calculating annual income to open bank account

MoneyChoices2

Hello everyone,

I’m waiting to open an interest paying bank account. I live of a lump sum, savings and a monthly allowance from my private pension and savings in other savings accounts. I have no debts and live within my budget.

The problem I have is that every bank asks for your gross annual Income and I don’t know how to calculate this.

Please can anyone help oe risen me in the right direction.

Thanks
Moneytips2

PRAISETHESUN

Others might have a different opinion, but I'd say that your "income" in this case will consist of your pension and any interest received from your lump sum savings. Any allowance you pay from your existing savings isn't really income, as it's already been earnt.

born_again

 monthly allowance from my private pension
Is your only real income. As savings could be spent, thus no longer a income. 

wmb194

MoneyChoices2 said:

Hello everyone,

I’m waiting to open an interest paying bank account. I live of a lump sum, savings and a monthly allowance from my private pension and savings in other savings accounts. I have no debts and live within my budget.

The problem I have is that every bank asks for your gross annual Income and I don’t know how to calculate this.

Please can anyone help oe risen me in the right direction.

Thanks
Moneytips2

Should be easy; annual pension plus an estimated amount of interest.

mta999

I always thought interest from savings does not count as income in this scenario

eskbanker

mta999 said:

I always thought interest from savings does not count as income in this scenario

Why wouldn't it - it's income and is taxed accordingly (subject to allowances, etc)?

wmb194

mta999 said:

I always thought interest from savings does not count as income in this scenario

No, it does. Dividends and PIDs as well.

sgthammer

A ballpark estimate is usually fine. The bank might have a lower bound where they don't think it's worth having you as a customer, or don't believe anyone could live on that amount, but you're not going to get into trouble over a rounding error. They just want to know at what order of magnitude a transaction would be "unusual" in your case, mainly for fraud/money laundering prevention purposes.

GeoffTF

I always quote my gross taxable income from my tax return, and upload it if they want evidence. There is an element of ask a silly question get a silly answer here. If that is not what they want, it is up to them to say what they do want.

Nebulous2

One important point is, do not try to game the system, by putting in different amounts. Applications are monitored for consistency and it can cause a lot of problems if you vary it wildly. 

Placitasgirl

I agree that savings interest is not usually taken as “income” in this context, ie opening a bank account. My husband and I recently decided to make one of his accounts joint but when asking about my gross annual income they said that my savings interest of over 1300 a month could not be used as income and that only my small bank pension could, we decided not to proceed as they said it would likely decline. I have the proceeds from the sale of my home working for me and draw the interest as “income” each month, so I’m glad I asked the question before getting that far as it wasn’t something we’d thought about before beginning the application.