djuk

A colleague of mine was not born in the UK but works from the UK as a base. He makes frequent trips within Europe for days at a time on business. He's under the impression that he needs to keep count of the total days he was not in the UK for tax reasons in a tax year but I've not heard of this - can anyone offer an insight?

PeteBrant

Sounds like bollocks to me. But I could be wrong.

If your country of residence is the UK, and you want to stop paying tax, you have to become a tax exile. THat is become a citizen of, say, monaco- Just like David COulthard or Jensen Button. Down side is that you are only allowed to spend a limited time in the UK each year (I beleive it is 6 months).

Andy-C

And that's a down side

PeteBrant

Yup, for the other 6 months you have to live on your private yacht with topless sun tanned beauties on deck pouring you magerhitas and slapping factor 20 on your nads.

Speech

Not sure about all of the in's and out's of it, but my old man is able to claim a big wedge of his tax back due to working outside the UK for more than 6 months a year - this is however offshore work in south Asia Pacific region so that may also be a contributing factor. I know that he keeps a note of when he left/entered the UK, flight details and has a Seamans log which he gets stamped up by the Chief/Captain (he works on a Dive Support Vessel, been on the same one for about 10 years or so now).

As I say, not sure about the details and it may only be applicable to offshore work, plus it's not tax avoidance, just gets some of it back.

Freak

In (very) basic terms-
Spend less than 180 days in any calender year in the uk and you can legally not pay income tax in the uk - primarily aimed at people who have emigrated or non uk nationals.
Spend less than 90 days AVERAGE over any 3 or 5 (cant remember which) year period and you can do the same.

For this reason I have a big folder full of boarding passes and in/out records

As you can tell , I am not an accountant....but something to the effect of the above does exist. There was a big thing last year when the way it is calculated was changed.
Previously, the day or arrival and departure did not count to the day total, so someone could fly into london on a monday,work the monday, tues, weds and thurs and fri, then fly out fri evening and yet only have spent 3 days in the uk towards the total.
Now the day or arrival and departure are counted.

rkbycrof

I believe it also depends on where you work, I'm based in the UK but work in Belgium, there is a dual tax agreement between the two countries, and is probably similar for any other EU country. This means if I work in Belgium for longer than 5 days a month then I pay tax in Belgium for that period and not in the UK.