The Government Gateway was the system used to register for the UK government’s online services, including the HMRC portal for Self Assessment. In March 2026, the Government Gateway was decommissioned and digital services were migrated to replacement systems.

How to create an HMRC Government Gateway account

Creating and setting up your government gateway account might seem mundane, but ensuring that it is done in the right way will allow you to manage all of your taxes and their associated details as efficiently as possible. This creates head space and reduces unnecessary stress, which meets two of the primary objectives that we constantly strive for as accountants for ecommerce and online businesses.

We have split this guide into two sections – Creating your government gateway account, which should only be completed once (per business) and adding taxes to your government gateway account, which will need to be done a number of times depending on how many taxes that your business is registered for.

Quick Tips

If you have multiple businesses, create a separate government gateway account for each business so that each businesses details are held in one place
Add and activate taxes to your government gateway account as soon as you have registered for them
You do not need to add taxes that you are not registered for

Instructions on how to create government gateway account

Go to HMRC’s login page.
Click the GREEN sign in button.
Click “Create sign in details”
Enter your email address where asked.
You will now be emailed a confirmation code. Use this code to confirm your email address.
You will now be issued with a User ID for your government gateway account.

RECOMMENDED: Print this page to PDF and file it somewhere safe. The user ID is a digital string so not memorable. Losing this ID can create a lot of work in the future (not to mention if you lose it moments before a deadline you may receive a late payment penalty).

IMPORTANT: As the User ID is a digit string it is sometimes confused for your UTR or tax ID. If you are registering for a tax (such as self assessment) please not that you have not yet registered, you have only created your government gateway account. You will still need to complete another step to register with HMRC.

Once you have followed the above steps you will now have created your government gateway account.

Adding taxes to your government gateway account

Now that you have setup your government gateway account, you should need to add each tax that your business has registered for to the account.

The taxes you can add include:

Corporation Tax
PAYE for Employers
VAT
VAT EC Sales List

To add a service you will need to do the following:

From the business tax summary page, click “get online access to a tax, duty or scheme”
Select the tax that you want to add
Click the GREEN continue button
Each tax will require specific information relating to that tax (UTR for Corp Tax, VAT certificate and last return filed for VAT, PAYE numbers for PAYE) so ensure that you have any associated information to hand before proceeding.
After you have added the tax HMRC will then post an activation code to your registered office address.
Once the code arrives, input this into the account and the tax will (finally) be added onto the account. Please note that you might have to wait 24 hours for the system to update and for it to actually show.

What next?

Now that you have created your government gateway account, you might also be wondering how to pay your VAT bill to HMRC, how to view your VAT certificate online or, since you’re on an accounting website, you might even be asking what are the benefits of being a limited company vs a sole trader? Find out more by clicking one of the links to read about each topic.

Government Gateway: sign in or set up

To access this service for the first time you’ll need:

a Government Gateway account – if you don’t already have one, you can set one up by using this service
your National Insurance number
access to a mobile phone or landline
details of one or more of the following – your UK Passport, tax credits, P60 or a recent payslip

It will take about 5 minutes to set up.

If you already have a Government Gateway account you can sign in using your existing login details.