Associate & self-employed

I invoice through a limited company. Am I employed or self-employed?

To a lender you are almost always self-employed, even where you hold a directorship and pay yourself a salary. That changes which documents are asked for and how the income is calculated. It does not, on its own, make borrowing harder.

Answer reviewed byColin WallaceLast reviewed

The full answer

What actually decides it.

Self-employed. Almost always, and on this one lenders do not disagree with each other.

It surprises people, because a limited company is a separate legal entity and you may well be an employee of it – on the payroll, with a salary, paying PAYE. That is a true description of your legal position and it is not the one a lender uses. A lender looks at who owns the company, and if that is you, it treats the income as self-employed regardless of the form it reaches you in.

What follows from that is a change of paperwork rather than a change of prospects. Instead of payslips, a lender wants your company accounts alongside your own personal income as evidenced by your SA302 and tax year overview. It is looking at two things at once: what the company earned, and what you took out of it.

It does not make borrowing harder in itself. It puts you in the self-employed assessment rather than the employed one, and everything else on this page – how many years of accounts, how dividends are read, how a one-off cost is treated – follows from being in that queue rather than the other one.

The one thing worth doing early is making sure your accounts and your personal tax figures tell the same story. They are read side by side, and a discrepancy between them costs time at underwriting that is much easier to resolve before an application than during one.

Where lenders differ

  1. Nothing to report here. Every lender treats a dentist invoicing through their own limited company as self-employed, and asks for the same two things: the company accounts and your personal income evidenced through HMRC.
  2. Where lenders do differ is in what they then do with those figures – how many years they want, whether they average them, and whether they can use profit left in the company. Those differences are real and significant, and they are covered by the other questions on this page rather than by this one.

Written from Colin Wallace’s recorded interview with Joe Wallace, 26 August 2026 and reviewed by Colin Wallace.

Also at this stage

The other questions associate dentists ask.

Each one has its own page, because each one is a different problem. The whole set sits together on the associate & self-employed hub.

And the one every stage asks: What does the advice cost

How it goes

  1. 01

    A conversation

    What you earn, how it actually arrives, and what you are trying to buy. No credit check at this point.

  2. 02

    The income case

    NHS contract, private work and dividends assembled into a picture an underwriter can accept, with the evidence attached.

  3. 03

    The lender search

    The panel searched on criteria as well as rate, so the application goes to a lender whose rules already fit you.

  4. 04

    Through to completion

    One adviser start to finish, with protection discussed alongside the mortgage rather than after it.

The next step

Ask for the
second opinion.

Tell us how to reach you and a specialist adviser will call back to talk through your income and what it should actually support. Your enquiry goes straight to the team.

Or call directly

0333 054 0747
  • A conversation first – there is no obligation to proceed.
  • Bring your last two years of figures if you have them to hand.

Call me back

Four details. Nothing else needed to start.