Originally Posted by
Iani
Right, to prove you have the earning requirement, you need to do one of a number of things
a. One year showing all your earnings came to over £18,600. This is really the one where the P60 is most useful.
b. Six months salary slips in a job (or jobs) which over the course of a year is on target to earn over £18,600. All those salary slips must be consecutive in earning, ie you can't have one month where you earned less.
c. Have earned over £18,600 in the last 12 months. This one is useful if say your earnings suddenly increase drastically, or you were very near the threshold but then had an increase, loads of overtime etc.
So, if you took on the new job paying around 20k in May 2011, you should definitely have 6 months worth of salary slips which will show you are on target to earn over £18,600. Go for it now if you want.
OR, get all your salary slips for the last 12 months, starting with this months and work backwards, get out a calculator and add up the salary shown on those slips (before tax remember). I would be extremely surprised if this didn't come to over £18,600, so you can again submit it now if you want.
You just don't have to wait until you have earned over £18,600 THIS financial year, because it doesn't go by financial years, it goes by calendar years - if you earned £18,600 or above in the last 12 months, you have met the requirement, simple as that.
So really, it's up to you when you apply. You might not want to apply until January to get more evidence of chats together perhaps.