HMRC has introduced “Bank Wizard” to the self-assessment online tax return. This is intended to help get more repayments to the right account quicker.

Bank Wizard will validate any bank account information entered at Section 4 “Filling in your Tax Return”. It checks the bank sort code entered to ensure it is a valid sort code, as well as checking that the format of the account number entered is correct.

If an incorrect entry is made an error message will appear. If a repayment is paid to the wrong account, HMRC need to wait on that being recovered before a new repayment can be issued.