Drip feeding money earned abroad into UK account

[expat]

I plan to earn some money working abroad in the middle east - something very short term - maybe only one month. Rather than go through all the tax issues, can I just be paid into a middle east account and drip feed about 1000 pounds a month into a UK account to avoid any suspicion from the tax man? Not wishing to avoid or evade tax, but my situation is so short term, I wanted to get this over and done with without jumping through hoops...

If you don't want to evade tax, declare your income to the tax man and pay the tax due on it. That will securely avoid any suspicion from the tax man.

OTOH if you do want to evade tax, that would be a criminal offence, and you would be lying to us in order to make us accessories to the crime, so in that hypothetical case you could **** off.

[wantacontract]

use the cash to buy gold....

although gold is high in price already.....

transfer some money to family member that you can trust?

If i ever contracted abroad, i think i would wire money to my dad in asia, and then have it transferred to my bro in law, and then back to me.....

hehehe, bugger handing money back to uk government, they would only go prop up sodding banks..and MP's expenses....

[expat]

Can't I just earn the money and decide what tax position to take in a few months when it all becomes more clear?

No, not really. Your tax position depends on matters of fact, such as where you are resident. It is not you who gets do decide things like that: there are rules for the tax office to use in deciding whether your are resident in the UK or not.

Most of these "matters of fact" are not choices that you can make by declaring them so, although they may be things that you can vary by your actions. So you can't just decide later that you weren't resident at the time. Either you were or you weren't.

Edit: I do sympathise with people with a strong urge not to give HMG any more to squander/thieve, but there is IMHO a higher principle that the govt does set and spend taxes, and the way to change that is at the ballot box, not by breaking the laws of a democracy. The way to pay less tax to the UK govt is to elect a different one, or genuinely leave the country.

[BlasterBates]

My advice on this Alan, is use an accountant, make sure you satisfy non-residency, and inform the taxman. It covers you and if your legit, the accountant will fend off HMRC, should they enquire, and at least that way it would just be that an enquiry from lowly qualified official rather than a highly trained ex SAS police investigator, who's pay depends on prosecuting as many people as possible.

Always remember the normal HMRC officials are judged on how many tax returns they process, and they just make sure they're correct. The investigators are judged on how many people they stick behind bars.