Some basic rules

UK tax is based on tax years which run from 6 April in one year to 5 April in the next. This is the period you need to look at when considering your liability to UK taxes.

If you are physically present in the UK for 183 or more days in any one tax year, then you are considered resident in the UK for tax purposes and will be taxable in the UK on your worldwide income. This rule is modified in a few circumstances, including the following:

• If you leave the UK to work abroad (as an employee or as self-employed) (when you may, by concession, be treated as non-UK resident from the date you leave the UK).
• Where you are non-UK domiciled (your ‘homeland’ is not the UK). The rules here are very complex.

In addition, under HMRC guidelines, you will normally be treated as resident if you stay in the UK for an average of 91 days or more per tax year for four consecutive years. For this purpose you will count as being present in the UK if you are physically here at midnight on that day. This means that you will t count days of arrival, but not departure, and day trips will not count as long as you have left before midnight.

Where your circumstances can be said to have changed, HMRC can and do look at your average presence in the UK over a period of less than four years. Therefore, if you are leaving the UK and wish to break UK residence you may be advised to restrict your UK presence to 90 days or less for each individual year.

To establish the correct tax treatment when you leave the UK, you should complete from P85 – see http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/p85.pdf.

You can find out more about these issues in the HMRC guidance called ‘HMRC 6’ see http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/cnr/hmrc6.pdf.