Your solar return is the chart of your year. It is built for the moment the Sun comes back to the exact point it held on the day you were born. Below you get that moment, the rising sign of the year, and the house of your Sun — no sign-up, no payment.
Once a year the Sun comes back to the exact point it held the moment you were born. That is the solar return — not the calendar birthday, but a precise moment, usually within a day either side of it. The chart built for that moment describes the year ahead: from one return of the Sun to the next.
Three things that, when the time of birth is known, are calculated exactly and need no interpretation: the moment of return down to the minute, the rising sign of the year, and the house your Sun landed in. The rising sign sets the tone of the year, the house of the Sun shows the area it gathers around. That is enough to see what the year is about.
Date of birth, time, and city. Time is not a formality here — everything depends on it at once, and that is easy to show. For someone born on 15 June, a birth time of 06:00 puts the return on 15 June, the rising sign of the year at Gemini and the Sun in house 12. The same person with a birth time of 18:00 gets a return eight hours later, a rising sign of Scorpio, and the Sun in house 7. The moment of return shifts by exactly as much as the time of birth is off, and sometimes lands on the neighbouring day. If you don't know the time, the calculation still runs — at noon — but it is not yet your year. The city is needed twice: where you were born, and where you meet your birthday.
The starting point. Western astrology counts from the spring equinox, Vedic astrology from where the stars actually are. Over two thousand years the two have drifted about twenty-four degrees apart, which is why signs in a Vedic solar return are almost always one back from the ones you are used to. What runs here is the Vedic system.