UK tax residency laws
Changes To UK Tax Residency Rules
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has published its draft legislation covering changes to the taxation of non-domiciles (see below) and the counting system for determining tax residency. This counting issue could affect those expatriates living in Spain who spend much time in the UK.
An individual will be treated as tax resident in the UK for a tax year if they either spend 183 days or more in Britain for the tax year, or if they are spend an average of 91 days or more there per annum measured over a period of four tax years.
For any expatriate who spends close to these numbers of days in the UK and wishes to remain a non-UK tax resident, keeping track of the exact days you fly in and out of the UK is very important. Until now, HMRC did not count a day of arrival or departure as a day in the UK. This would mean, for example, that if you landed Britain on a Monday morning and flew out again on a Friday evening, you would only have spent three days there.
Under the new proposals, both the day of arrival and departure will count. In the above example, therefore, you would now be counted as spending five days in the UK.
Tags: spain, tax, expatriate
