Bit of a long shot but I thought I would post my situation on here to see if anyone has any suggestions….
I was doing a normal contracting gig in the UK up to about 2019, then after that contract finished started selling training courses on Udemy. I kept my UK Ltd and received all the payments from Udemy through there. It went well enough that I did not return to contracting and just continued doing this. This gave me some freedom to travel and I’ve since found myself living in Thailand since Feb 2020 (got stuck here when covid started) and since then just carried on as I am, paying tax in the UK and continued to use the UK Ltd. I’m now quite settled here and after chatting with a “guy down the pub” he suggested I was crazy to be paying tax in the UK now I am not living there.
Anyway, I am wondering what I should do. It’s something I asked my accountant about over a year ago and liquidation of the UK Ltd was discussed, but UK accountants are not experienced in international tax advice so I didn’t take it any further after that and put it on my “things to do list”.
It seems first of all, from a personal tax perspective I should not be a UK tax resident and sign up to the Thailand tax system. From what I understand of the tax system here any income earned abroad from previous financial year does not incur income tax in Thailand. When I do this I will seek guidance from a local accountant so not worried about this part.
Then there is the UK Ltd and the retained profits in there - this is the part that gives me a headache. I was thinking about creating a US LLC with the help of a US accountant and ensuring all future income goes through there but this presents further questions:
1. If I did this am I allowed to move the retained profits from the UK Ltd (after corp tax) to the US LLC?
2. If not is my only option to liquidate the UK Ltd?
3. Is a US LLC a good option or should I be looking at an alternative country for this? Note: I have considered a Thailand Ltd but it is not a good option for many reasons.
4. Should I keep both a UK Ltd and a US LLC and just draw down the profits from the UK Ltd over time?
5. Do I even need a UK Ltd or LLC for this situation? Udemy doesn’t need me to have a Ltd company, and transfers (after sales tax and what effectively are considered royalties) the income to my PayPal or Payoneer account. It seems my tax life would be a lot simpler and I’d pay a lot less tax and accountancy fees if I removed this from the equation. I’d get stung for a bit of extra tax from the US side as there isn’t the same agreement with Thailand/US as UK/US but thats only 5% I think and a lot less than corp tax.
I appreciate these are questions that are far more suited to an accountant, but the UK ones cannot help me with this so if anyone on here has a recommendation for an accountant with some kind of international experience I’d love to hear it.
I was doing a normal contracting gig in the UK up to about 2019, then after that contract finished started selling training courses on Udemy. I kept my UK Ltd and received all the payments from Udemy through there. It went well enough that I did not return to contracting and just continued doing this. This gave me some freedom to travel and I’ve since found myself living in Thailand since Feb 2020 (got stuck here when covid started) and since then just carried on as I am, paying tax in the UK and continued to use the UK Ltd. I’m now quite settled here and after chatting with a “guy down the pub” he suggested I was crazy to be paying tax in the UK now I am not living there.
Anyway, I am wondering what I should do. It’s something I asked my accountant about over a year ago and liquidation of the UK Ltd was discussed, but UK accountants are not experienced in international tax advice so I didn’t take it any further after that and put it on my “things to do list”.
It seems first of all, from a personal tax perspective I should not be a UK tax resident and sign up to the Thailand tax system. From what I understand of the tax system here any income earned abroad from previous financial year does not incur income tax in Thailand. When I do this I will seek guidance from a local accountant so not worried about this part.
Then there is the UK Ltd and the retained profits in there - this is the part that gives me a headache. I was thinking about creating a US LLC with the help of a US accountant and ensuring all future income goes through there but this presents further questions:
1. If I did this am I allowed to move the retained profits from the UK Ltd (after corp tax) to the US LLC?
2. If not is my only option to liquidate the UK Ltd?
3. Is a US LLC a good option or should I be looking at an alternative country for this? Note: I have considered a Thailand Ltd but it is not a good option for many reasons.
4. Should I keep both a UK Ltd and a US LLC and just draw down the profits from the UK Ltd over time?
5. Do I even need a UK Ltd or LLC for this situation? Udemy doesn’t need me to have a Ltd company, and transfers (after sales tax and what effectively are considered royalties) the income to my PayPal or Payoneer account. It seems my tax life would be a lot simpler and I’d pay a lot less tax and accountancy fees if I removed this from the equation. I’d get stung for a bit of extra tax from the US side as there isn’t the same agreement with Thailand/US as UK/US but thats only 5% I think and a lot less than corp tax.
I appreciate these are questions that are far more suited to an accountant, but the UK ones cannot help me with this so if anyone on here has a recommendation for an accountant with some kind of international experience I’d love to hear it.
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