Non-residents limited to ten days' work in UK
HMRC guidelines have confirmed that non-residents who work more than ten days in the UK will jeapordise their tax status
NON-RESIDENTS will not be able to work in the UK for more than ten days without it potentially affecting their status, HM Revenue & Customs guidelines have confirmed.
Previously there had been no figure put on the number of days spent working in the UK, although non-residents were not able to spend more 90 days in the country.
Guidelines seen by Accountancy Age and issued to an ex-patriot forum attended by HMRC and tax firms with an interest in non-residents’ tax affairs, state: “HMRC will generally accept that working in the UK for fewer than ten days in a year will not by itself prevent an individual claiming they have made a break with the UK because they are working full time abroad.
“If more days than this are worked in the UK, whether an individual is working full time abroad will depend upon their particular circumstances.”
Jayne Vaughan, head of employment tax at KPMG, said: “You could not do any substantive duties in the UK, but you could spend up to 90 days here. There were no hard and fast rules. In one sense it is good that they have put a marker in the sand. But anything over ten days will be a problem for people.”
This could affect people coming back to the UK for business meetings, she said.
“We were surprised it was ten days – this does not seem a long time.”
The government will consult over a statutory residency test, chancellor George Osborne announced in the Budget.
